Unified model of electron beam shot noise and coherent spontaneous emission in the helical wiggler free electron laser

Abstract

A numerical algorithm for simulating electron beam shot noise in free electron lasers (FELs) is presented. Shot noise is a source of spontaneous emission that may be amplified in the self-amplified spontaneous emission regime of operation. This regime is of great importance to XUV and x-ray FELs where the spontaneous emission is currently the only effective source available for amplification. The algorithm uses a quasiuniform phase-space distribution of appropriately charge weighted macroparticles. The statistical properties of the macroparticles are derived directly from the temporal Poisson statistical properties of the real electron distribution. Unlike previous algorithms, ours does not rely upon any averaging over a resonant radiation period time scale and so more correctly describes the underlying physics. The algorithm also allows shot noise to be modeled self-consistently in unaveraged FEL models which are able to describe subwavelength phenomena such as coherent spontaneous emission (CSE). The algorithm is used in the unaveraged ID FEL numerical simulation code FEMFEL and demonstrates spontaneous emission due to shot noise and CSE in both rectangular and Gaussian electron pulse current profiles. The preliminary results show good qualitative and quantitative agreement with theory. © 2003 The American Physical Society.