Design study for the cascaded HGHG experiment based on the SDUV-FEL

Cascading stages of high-gain harmonic generation (HGHG) free electron laser (FEL) is a promising way to produce fully coherent X-ray radiation. As a test facility for modern FEL R&D, the Shanghai deep ultraviolet FEL (SDUV-FEL) is now under upgrading for the cascading two stages of HGHG experiment. Since the energy of the electron beam is as low as about 185 MeV after upgrade, the total harmonic number of this two stages HGHG is only 2x2, and the wavelength of the final radiation is 196.5 nm which is the 4th harmonic of the 786 nm seed laser. With help of three-dimensional simulation codes, design studies on the FEL physics for the cascaded HGHG experiment are present based on the parameters of the upgraded SDUV-FEL facility. It is found from the simulation results that the part of the electron beam which has been used in the first stage can still generate powerful radiation in the radiator of the second stage, and this radiation will be difficult to be separated from the radiation generated by the fresh part of the electron beam. To overcome this problem, a novel method based on the energy spectrum of the electron beam is proposed in this paper to demonstrate the "fresh bunch" technique.