High resolution simulation of beam dynamics in electron linacs for x-ray free electron lasers

In this paper we report on large-scale high resolution simulations of beam dynamics in electron linacs for the next-generation x-ray free electron lasers (FELs). We describe key features of a parallel macroparticle simulation code including three-dimensional (3D) space-charge effects, short-range structure wakefields, coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) wakefields, and treatment of radio-frequency (rf) accelerating cavities using maps obtained from axial field profiles. We present a study of the microbunching instability causing severe electron beam fragmentation in the longitudinal phase space which is a critical issue for future FELs. Using parameters for a proposed FEL linac at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), we show that a large number of macroparticles (beyond 100 million) is generally needed to control the numerical macroparticle shot noise and avoid overestimating the microbunching instability. We explore the effect of the longitudinal grid on simulation results. We also study the effect of initial uncorrelated energy spread on the final uncorrelated energy spread of the beam for the FEL linac.