First-principles simulation of free-electron lasers with the Galilean electromagnetic particle-in-cell method: even harmonics of planar undulators

Abstract

Free-electron laser (FEL) codes average the electron motion over the undulator period and add the radiation harmonics through on-axis coupling factors. This is accurate for the fundamental, but the even harmonics of a planar undulator, which vanish on the axis, are not modelled at all. We show that the Galilean electromagnetic particle-in-cell method (GEM-PIC), which resolves the electron motion within the undulator period and the carrier of the forward radiation field without a Courant limit, simulates FELs on two CPU cores at two to three times the cost of a time-dependent run of the averaged code GENESIS. The quasi-cylindrical code GEM-PIC-RZ reproduces the coherent spontaneous emission of a planar undulator in each azimuthal mode $m = 0$--3 to within 2\,\% of the radiation integral, and seeded amplifiers to within a few per cent of GENESIS run with the same physics. For a seeded planar FEL at 10.6\,nm it predicts 12\,MW of second-harmonic power at saturation, $1.1\times10^{-3}$ of the fundamental; this harmonic is absent from the averaged model. The unaveraged code Puffin, which has no space charge, gives a comparable level, 9 to 11\,MW for the space-charge-widened and the initial beam size, and the same transverse structure.