Microbunching instability in velocity bunching∗

Microbunching instability is one of the most challenging threats to FEL performances. The most effective ways to cure the microbunching instability include suppression of the density modulation sources and suppression of the amplification process. In this paper we study the microbunching instability in velocity bunching. Our simulations show that the initial current and energy modulations are suppressed in velocity bunching process, which may be attributed to the strong plasma oscillation and Landau damping from the relatively low beam energy and large relative slice energy spread. A heating effect that may be present in a long solenoid is also preliminarily analyzed.