Laser Plasma Accelerators (LPAs), reaching gigavolt-per-centimeter accelerating fields, can generate high peak current, low emittance and GeV class electron beams that can be qualified by a Free Electron Laser (FEL) application. We report here on the commissioning of the COXINEL beamline driven by the HZDR plasma accelerator and experimental demonstration of FEL lasing at 270 nm in a seeded configuration. We also present the transport and characterization of LPA based beams using different imaging systems along the beamline. The use of a streak camera and a UV spectrometer enable to align the seed and the electron beam in the temporal, spectral and transverse domains. Furthermore, the appearance of interference fringes, resulting from the interaction between the phase-locked emitted radiation and the seed, confirms longitudinal coherence, representing an essential feature of seeded FELs. These results are comforted by ELEGANT and GENESIS simulations.
While synchrotron light facilities and Free Electron Lasers (FELs) are widely used for matter investigation, Laser Plasma Acceleration (LPA), delivering nowadays GeV electron beams in few centimeter accelerating distance, can be considered to drive undulator radiation and FEL. We report on the generation of undulator radiation on the COXINEL dedicated manipulation line designed for an FEL application. The LPA large divergence is handled with variable gradient permanent magnet quadrupoles and the high energy spread is reduced via a magnetic chicane. We evidence the undulator spatio-spectral signature on the first and second harmonics while measuring the radiation focused onto the entrance slit of a spectrometer equipped with a CDD camera. A good agreement is found between measurements and SRW simulations, using electron beam parameters in the undulator deduced from the measured initial electron beam parameters transported along the beamline. In addition, ray optics approach is compared to Fourier optics for the radiation propagation through optical elements.
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