Kinematics of ultrarelativistic electrons in periodic fields of moderate strength

TL;DR

This paper presents a kinematic model for ultrarelativistic electrons in periodic fields, accounting for mass shift effects, to optimize the spectral brightness of x-ray and gamma-ray sources like XFELs.

Contribution

It introduces a novel kinematic model incorporating mass shift effects and a method for fine-tuning undulators to maximize spectral brightness.

Findings

Model accurately predicts electron spectrum evolution.

Method improves spectral brightness of radiation sources.

Incorporates mass shift effect in periodic fields.

Abstract

Bright sources of hard x- and gamma-ray electromagnetic radiation are of high demand in physics and technology. Such sources, e.g., x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs), undulator- or Compton-based sources of polarized positrons, etc., require intense ultrarelativivstic electron beams with small energy spread. Also each electron should emit many photons of almost identical spectra per pass through the periodic field of undulator or laser pulse. We develop a kinematic model based on the energy-momentum conservation law and the corpuscular presentation of the periodic-field photons. The model incorporates the mass shift effect in periodic fields. We made an assumption of equality of the average number of photons, which induce the mass shift, to the Poisson parameter of the coherent field. The model allows to evaluate the evolution of the spectrum of electron bunch passing through the periodic fields of undulators or laser pulses. We propose a method of undulator fine tuning aimed at maximization of the spectral brightness.