In the Linear Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at SLAC, the injector laser plays an important role as the source of the electron beam for the Free Electron Laser (FEL). The emittance of the beam is highly related to the transverse profile of the injector laser. Currently the LCLS injector laser has undesired features, such as hot spots, which carry over to the electron beam. These undesired features increase electron emittance, degrade the FEL performance, and complicate operations. The injector laser shaping project at LCLS aims to produce arbitrary electron beam profiles, such as cut-Gaussian, uniform, and parabolic, and to study the effect of spatial profiles on beam emittance and FEL performance. Effectively it also allows easy transition between the two spare lasers, where the operators can use the spatial shaper to achieve identical profiles for the two lasers. In this paper, we describe the experimental methods to achieve laser profile shaping and electron beam profile shaping respectively, and demonstrate promising results.
Proceedings of the North American Particle Accelerator Conf., NAPAC2016, Chicago, IL, USA