Synchrotron radiation representation in phase space

The notion of brightness is efficiently conveyed in geometric optics as density of rays in phase space. Wigner has introduced his famous distribution in quantum mechanics as a quasiprobability density of a quantum system in phase space. Naturally, the same formalism can be used to represent light including all the wave phenomena as originally done by Walther and for synchrotron radiation by Kim. It provides a natural framework for radiation propagation and optics matching by transferring the familiar “baggage” of accelerator physics (β function, emittance, phase-space transforms, etc.) to synchrotron radiation. More specifically, the use of Wigner distribution formalism allows a rigorous description of partially coherent non-Gaussian sources, which is generally the case for synchrotron radiation from an undulator with a high degree of transverse coherence. This paper reviews many of the properties of the Wigner distribution starting from quantum mechanics and provides examples of how its use enables physically insightful description of partially coherent synchrotron radiation in phase space. The concepts of diffraction limit and coherence are given an exact correspondence to their quantum mechanical counterparts. In particular, it is shown that the undulator radiation on resonance by a single electron is not diffraction limited though fully coherent. An extension of how to account for practically important cases of electron beams with nearly diffraction limited emittances is presented along with a discussion of appropriate figures of merit suitable for comparing future light sources