Experimental and numerical study of short pulse effects in FELs

Abstract We report the experimental and numerical investigations of the influence of short pulse effects occurring in FELs in different operational regimes for electron bunch lengths which are of the order of the slippage distance. Several observables such as the small signal gain, the macropulse power and the spectral distribution of the FEL radiation were determined experimentally within the constraints of the stable focus regime at the infrared FEL at the S-DALINAC and for the limit cycle regime at the Dutch near infrared FEL FELIX. The experimental findings were compared to predictions of numerical simulations based on the 1D time dependent code FEL1D-OSC. The agreement between experiment and simulation is good. Furthermore, the simulations reveal a chaotic behavior of the macropulses for specific values of the slippage as well as period-doubling, two effects that are predicted to show up in the spectral distribution.