A tunable plasma-based energy dechirper

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Abstract

A tunable plasma-based energy dechirper has been developed at FLASHForward to remove the correlated energy spread of a 681 MeV electron bunch. Through the interaction of the bunch with wakefields excited in plasma the projected energy spread was reduced from a FWHM of 1.31% to 0.33% without reducing the stability of the incoming beam. The experimental results for variable plasma density are in good agreement with analytic predictions and three-dimensional simulations. The proof-of-principle dechirping gradients of 202 +/- 18 MeV/m demonstrated exceed those of competing state-of-the-art techniques by two orders of magnitude and may be key to future plasma wakefield-based free-electron lasers and high energy physics facilities, where large intrinsic chirps need to be removed.