Femtosecond Compression Dynamics and Timing Jitter Suppression in a THz-driven Electron Bunch Compressor
Emma Snively, Mohamed A. K. Othman, M. Kozina, Benjamin K. Ofori-Okai, Stephen Weathersby, S. Park, Xiaozhe Shen, Xijie Wang, Matthias C. Hoffmann, Renkai Li, Emilio A. Nanni
Abstract
We present the first demonstration of THz driven bunch compression and timing stabilization of a relativistic electron beam. Quasi-single-cycle strong field THz radiation is used in a shorted parallel-plate structure to compress a few-fC beam with 2.5 MeV kinetic energy by a factor of 2.7, producing a 39 fs rms bunch length and a reduction in timing jitter by more than a factor of 2 to 31 fs rms. This THz driven technique offers a significant improvement to beam performance for applications like ultrafast electron diffraction, providing a critical step towards unprecedented timing resolution in ultrafast sciences, and other accelerator applications using femtosecond-scale electron beams.