Image of the Transverse Bunch Profile via COTR

Transverse beam profile diagnostics based on Optical Transition Radiation (OTR) is a routine technique at most modern electron linear accelerators (linacs) which is difficult to implement for FEL beams [*] and LWPA accelerators [**]. The reason is that a standard OTR beam profile monitor with a few micrometers space resolution cannot be used for measurements of ultrashort bunch profiles due to coherent effects in the OTR emission process [***]. We have developed an approach which allows calculating the propagation of coherent optical transition radiation (COTR) through a standard optical system consisting of a focusing lens and a spatial resolving detector placed in the image plane. Strict summation of the OTR fields emitted coherently by electrons inside the bunch and its focusing onto the detector plane allows obtaining a COTR image of the bunch profile. With the assumption of a Gaussian transverse bunch profile it is shown that the resulting image has a typical "ring" shape, characteristics of which are depended on the bunch transverse rms size and optical system parameters.