Demonstration of Model-Independent Control of the Longitudinal Phase Space of Electron Beams in the Linac-Coherent Light Source with Femtosecond Resolution

The dynamics of intense electron bunches in free electron lasers and plasma wakefield accelerators are dominated by complex collective effects such as wakefields, space charge, coherent synchrotron radiation, and drift unpredictably with time, making it difficult to control and tune beam properties using model-based approaches. We report on a first of its kind combination of automatic, model-independent feedback with a neural network for control of the longitudinal phase space of relativistic electron beams with femtosecond resolution based only on transverse deflecting cavity measurements.