2D Optical Streaking for Ultra-Short Electron Beam Diagnostics

We propose a novel approach to measure short electron bunch profiles at micrometer level. Low energy electrons generated during beam-gas ionization are simultaneously modulated by the transverse electric field of a circularly-polarized laser, and then they are collected at a downstream screen where the angular modulation is converted to a circular shape. The longitudinal bunch profile is simply represented by the angular distribution of the electrons on the screen. We only need to know the laser wavelength for calibration and there is no phase synchronization problem. Meanwhile the required laser power is also relatively low in this setup. Some simulations examples and experimental consideration of this method are discussed. At Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), an S-band RF transverse deflector (TCAV) is used to measure the bunch length with a resolution 10 femtosecond (fs) rms. An X-band deflector (wavelength 2.6cm) is proposed recently to improve the resolution. However, at the low charge operation mode (20pC), the pulse length can be as short as fs. It is very challenging to measure femtosecond and sub-femtosecond level bunch length. One of the methods is switching from RF to {mu}m level wavelength laser to deflect the bunch. A powerful laser ({approx}10s GW) is required to deflect such a high energy beam (GeV) in a wiggler. Synchronization is another difficulty: the jitter between the bunch and the laser can be larger than the laser wavelength, which makes single-shot measurement impossible. To reduce the laser power, we propose to use ionized electrons from high energy electron beam and gas interaction for high energy electron bunch diagnostics. Similarly, the femtosecond X-ray streak camera uses X-ray ionization electrons to measure the X-ray pulse. The electrons generated by beam-gas ionization have low energy (eVs). Therefore, a lower laser power is possible to deflect such low energy electrons. Note that there is no field ionization in our case. To avoid field ionization, which occurs in plasma case, gases species with high field ionization threshold should be considered. For a linear polarized laser, the kick to the ionized electrons depends on the phase of the laser when the electrons are born and the unknown timing jitter between the electron beam and laser beam makes the data analysis very difficult. Here we propose to use a circular polarized laser to do a 2-dimensional (2D) streaking (both x and y) and measure the bunch length from the angular distribution on the screen, where the phase jitter causes only a rotation of the image on the screen without changing of the relative angular distribution. Also we only need to know the laser wavelength for calibration. A similar circular RF deflecting mode was used to measure long bunches. We developed a numerical particle-in-Cell (PIC) code to study the dynamics of ionization electrons with the high energy beam and the laser beam