A hybrid approach for generating ultra-short bunches for advanced accelerator applications

Generation of electron beams with high phase-space density, short bunch length and high peak current is an essential requirement for future linear colliders and bright electron beam sources. Unfortunately, such bunches cannot be produced directly from the source since forces from the mutual repulsion of electrons would destroy the brilliance of the beam within a short distance. Here, we detail a beam dynamics study of a two-stage compression scheme that can generate ultra-short bunches without degrading the beam quality. In the first stage, a magnetized beam is compressed with a velocity bunching technique in which the longitudinal phase space is rotated so that electrons on the bunch tail become faster than electrons in the bunch head. In the second stage, the beam is further compressed with a magnetic chicane. With the aid of numerical simulations we show that our two-staged scheme is capable to increase the current of a 50 pC bunch by a notable factor of 100 (from 15 A to 1.5 kA) while the emittance growth can be suppressed to 1% with appropriate tailoring of the initial beam distribution.