Two-chicane compressed harmonic generation of soft x rays

Seeding an electron bunch prior to compression simultaneously shifts the laser modulation to shorter wavelengths while decreasing the required modulation amplitude. The final x-ray wavelength is then tunable by controlling the compression factor with the rf phase. In this paper we describe a two-chicane scheme that allows for large modulation amplitudes, extending the method to photocathode beams with significant uncorrelated energy spreads. The downside of such compressed seeding is the need to maintain bunching across an extended accelerator region. We present analytical estimates and computer simulations to study tolerances for a sample lattice. We also note that transportation of the fine compressed modulation structure is helped by error self-correction in the second chicane, an effect that may be of more general interest.