With gigaelectron-volts per centimetre energy gains and femtosecond electron beams, laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) is a promising candidate for applications, such as ultrafast electron diffraction, multistaged colliders and radiation sources (betatron, compton, undulator, free electron laser). However, for some of these applications, the beam performance, for example, energy spread, divergence and shot-to-shot fluctuations, need a drastic improvement. Here, we show that, using a dedicated transport line, we can mitigate these initial weaknesses. We demonstrate that we can manipulate the beam longitudinal and transverse phase-space of the presently available LWFA beams. Indeed, we separately correct orbit mis-steerings and minimise dispersion thanks to specially designed variable strength quadrupoles, and select the useful energy range passing through a slit in a magnetic chicane. Therefore, this matched electron beam leads to the successful observation of undulator synchrotron radiation after an 8 m transport path. These results pave the way to applications demanding in terms of beam quality.

The laser-plasma accelerator (LPA) presently provides electron beams with a typical current of a few kA, a bunch length of a few fs, energy in the few hundred MeV to several GeV range, a divergence of typically 1 mrad, an energy spread of the order of 1%, and a normalized emittance of the order of π.mm.mrad. One of the first applications could be to use these beams for the production of radiation: undulator emission has been observed but the rather large energy spread (1%) and divergence (1 mrad) prevent straightforward free-electron laser (FEL) amplification. An adequate beam manipulation through the transport to the undulator is then required. The key concept proposed here relies on an innovative electron beam longitudinal and transverse manipulation in the transport towards an undulator: a 'demixing' chicane sorts the electrons according to their energy and reduces the spread from 1% to one slice of a few ‰ and the effective transverse size is maintained constant along the undulator (supermatching) by a proper synchronization of the electron beam focusing with the progress of the optical wave. A test experiment for the demonstration of FEL amplification with an LPA is under preparation. Electron beam transport follows different steps with strong focusing with permanent magnet quadrupoles of variable strength, a demixing chicane with conventional dipoles, and a second set of quadrupoles for further focusing in the undulator. The FEL simulations and the progress of the preparation of the experiment are presented.

Ultraviolet (UV) synchrotron radiation circular dichroism (SRCD) spectroscopy has made an important contribution to the determination and understanding of the structure of bio-molecules. In this paper, we report an innovative approach that we term time-resolved SRCD (tr-SRCD), which overcomes the limitations of current broadband UV SRCD setups. This technique allows accessing ultrafast time scales (down to nanoseconds), previously measurable only by other methods, such as infrared (IR), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), fluorescence and absorbance spectroscopies, and small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). The tr-SRCD setup takes advantage of the natural polarization of the synchrotron radiation emitted by a bending magnet to record broadband UV CD faster than any current SRCD setup, improving the acquisition speed from 10 mHz to 130 Hz and the accessible temporal resolution by several orders of magnitude. We illustrate the new approach by following the isomer concentration changes of an azopeptide after a photoisomerization. This breakthrough in SRCD spectroscopy opens up a wide range of potential applications to the detailed characterization of biological processes, such as protein folding and protein-ligand binding.

Diffraction gratings are key elements of soft X-ray synchrotron beamlines. Besides wavelength dispersion, specific parameters can be tailored to adjust the energy dependent efficiency and focusing, and to correct wavefront aberrations. As key elements of a beamline, any departure from the design values can severely reduce the overall performance. On the other hand, known non-conformities can often be corrected by slight adjustment of the alignment parameters. A careful and accurate metrology is therefore required before installation on the beamline. After presenting what variable line spacing gratings, variable groove depth gratings, and alternate multilayer gratings are, the use of the SOLEIL long trace profiler for the measurement of groove density variation along the surface and of the atomic force microscope for the groove geometry and roughness characterizations will be discussed. A few examples of grating metrology will be presented and analyzed with the help of optical simulations.

Undulator based synchrotron light sources and Free Electron Lasers (FELs) are valuable modern probes of matter with high temporal and spatial resolution. Laser Plasma Accelerators (LPAs), delivering GeV electron beams in few centimeters, are good candidates for future compact light sources. However the barriers set by the large energy spread, divergence and shot-to-shot fluctuations require a specific transport line, to shape the electron beam phase space for achieving ultrashort undulator synchrotron radiation suitable for users and even for achieving FEL amplification. Proof-of-principle LPA based undulator emission, with strong electron focusing or transport, does not yet exhibit the full specific radiation properties. We report on the generation of undulator radiation with an LPA beam based manipulation in a dedicated transport line with versatile properties. After evidencing the specific spatio-spectral signature, we tune the resonant wavelength within 200–300 nm by modification of the electron beam energy and the undulator field. We achieve a wavelength stability of 2.6%. We demonstrate that we can control the spatio-spectral purity and spectral brightness by reducing the energy range inside the chicane. We have also observed the second harmonic emission of the undulator.