In this paper we propose a scheme that allows a strong reduction of the timing jitter between the pulses of a free electron laser (FEL) and external laser pulses delivered simultaneously at the FEL experimental stations for pump-probe–type experiments. The technique, applicable to all seeding-based FEL schemes, relies on the free-space optical transport of a portion of the seed laser pulse from its optical table to the experimental stations. The results presented here demonstrate that a carefully designed laser beam transport, incorporating also a transverse beam position stabilization, allows one to keep the timing fluctuations, added by as much as 150 m of free space propagation and a number of beam folding mirrors, to less than 4 femtoseconds rms. By its nature our scheme removes the major common timing jitter sources, so the overall jitter in pump-probe measurements done in this way will be below 10 fs (with a margin to be lowered to below 5 fs), much better than the best results reported previously in the literature amounting to 33 fs rms.

• Received 14 January 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTAB.17.040702

This article is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society