Cascaded modulator-chicane modules for optical manipulation of relativistic electron beams

A sequential arrangement of three pairs of modulators and dispersive sections that performs precise manipulation of a relativistic electron beam's longitudinal phase space is described. We show that using only a single laser wavelength, this scheme acts as a waveform synthesizer through linearization of local regions of phase space to generate sawtooth, triangular, and square wave-type distributions. It also acts as an optical analog of an rf function generator to generate intense coherent radiation that has periodic triangle and square field profiles at the optical wavelength. The same setup can also be used to improve the high-harmonic bunching factors in echo-enabled harmonic generation schemes up to 25% and to produce a bunching factor above 90% at the laser fundamental wavelength for high-efficiency capture in inverse free electron laser acceleration applications. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevSTAB.16.010706