Z-slicer: a Scheme for Shaping the Electron Beam Profile in a Linac

A train of short bunches (∼100 fs) are at a premium at accelerator facilities and their applications include terahertz (THz) generation, short bunch diagnostics, advanced accelerator R&D, etc [1].In this work we report on the design and simulation of an experiment involving a 20 MeV electron beam, that will be intercepted by a set of metallic slits inside a bunch compressor. After the mask, some electrons are scattered while other pass through un-affected. After exiting the bunch compressor, those electrons that were not affected by the slits will appear as short electron bunches. The key advantage of our scheme is its simplicity, tunability and low cost. The scheme does not require any additional hardware such as lasers, undulator, or transverse deflecting cavity. The tuning variable is only the RF-chirp. The detection of the bunching requires just a skew quad in the chicane and a transverse screen downstream.