Comparison of the coherent radiation-induced microbunching instability in a free-electron laser and a magnetic chicane

A self-amplified spontaneous emission free-electron laser (SASE FEL) is a device which is based on the creation of a very intense, relativistic electron beam which has very little temperature in all three phase planes. The beam in this system is described as having “high brightness,” and when it is bent repetitively in a magnetic undulator, undergoes a radiation-mediated microbunching instability. This instability can amplify the original radiation amplitude at a particular, resonant wavelength by many orders of magnitude. In order to obtain high brightness beams, it is necessary to compress them to obtain higher currents than available from the electron source. Compression is accomplished by the use of magnetic chicanes, which are quite similar to, if much longer than, a single period of the undulator. It should not be surprising that such chicanes also support a radiation-mediated microbunching interaction, which has recently been investigated, and has been termed coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) instability. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the characteristics of the closely related FEL and CSR microbunching instabilities. We show that a high-gain regime of the CSR instability exists which is formally similar to the FEL instability.