Characteristics and properties of synchrotron radiation

Abstract

The properties of synchrotron radiation are primarily explained by classical electromagnetism and special relativity. The formal derivation based on relativistic electrodynamics is rather complex, but the underlying physics is quite simple and can lead to the essential properties in an intuitive way. Many of such properties are directly related to the combination of relativistic effects such as the Lorentz contraction and the Doppler shift. Based on this philosophy, we treat with minimum formalism essential features such as the intensity, brightness and spectral distribution of the emission from bending magnets, wigglers and undulators, the time structure and the space and time coherence. Then we extend the same strategy to the essential features of free electron lasers.