Abstract-Towards femtosecond-level intrinsic laser synchronization at fourth generation light sources

M. Chen, S. Kovalev, N. Awari, Z. Wang, S. Germanskiy, B. Green, J.-C. Deinert, and M. Gensch

https://www.osapublishing.org/ol/abstract.cfm?uri=ol-43-9-2213

In this Letter, the proof of principle for a scheme providing intrinsic femtosecond-level synchronization between an external laser system and fourth generation light sources is presented. The scheme is applicable at any accelerator-based light source that is based on the generation of coherent radiation from ultrashort electron bunches such as superradiant terahertz (THz) facilities or X-FELs. It makes use of a superradiant THz pulse generated by the accelerator as an intrinsically synchronized gate signal for electro-optical slicing. We demonstrate that the scheme enables a reduction of the timing instability by more than 2 orders of magnitude. This demonstration experiment thereby proves that intrinsically synchronized time-resolved experiments utilizing laser and accelerator-based radiation pulses on few tens of femtosecond (fs) to few fs timescales are feasible.

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