Feasibility Study of A Beat-Wave Seeded THz FEL at the Neptune Laboratory

Free-Electron Laser in the THz range can be used to generate high output power radiation or to modulate the electron beam longitudinally on the radiation wavelength scale. Microbunching on the scale of 1-5 THz is of particular importance for potential phase-locking of a modulated electron beam to a laser-driven plasma accelerating structure. However the lack of a seeding source for the FEL at this spectral range limits operation to a SASE FEL only, which denies a subpicosecond synchronization of the current modulation or radiation with an external laser source. One possibility to overcome this problem is to seed the FEL with two external laser beams, which difference (beat-wave) frequency is matched to the resonant FEL frequency in the THz range. In this presentation we study feasibility of an experiment on laser beat-wave injection in the THz FEL considered at the UCLA Neptune Laboratory, where both a high brightness photoinjector and a two-wavelength, TW-class CO2 laser system exist. By incorporating the energy modulation of the electron beam by the ponderomotive force of the beat-wave in a modified version of the time-dependent FEL code Genesis 1.3, the performance of a FEL at Neptune is simulated and analyzed.