Monitoring and manipulation of sub-picosecond beams

In cutting-edge applications such as advanced accelerators and free-electron lasers, very high brightness beams of duration shorter than a picosecond are required. Further, these applications demand specific types of longitudinal beam profiles, such as pulse trains, and ramped pulses. The production of such types of beams present challenges both in technique, and in the instrumentation required to verify the method employed. The techniques for producing such short beams which have received the most investigation in recent years include chicane compression, and modulation via free-electron laser mechanism and its inverse. We discuss the principles and relevant single particle and collective effects which impact their performance. We review progress in implementing these schemes, as well as newer concepts such as relativistic velocity bunching and use of negative R₅₆ compressors. We also discussed the challenges in diagnosing these state-of-the-art beam systems