Suppression of Microbunching Instability Using a Quadrupole Inserted Chicane in Free-Electron-Laser Linacs

The microbunching instability (MBI) driven by beam collective effects in a linear accelerator of a free-electron laser (FEL) facility can significantly degrade the electron beam quality and FEL performance. A method exploited longitudinal mixing derived from the natural transverse spread of the beam was proposed several years ago using two dipoles to suppress the instability. In this paper, instead of using bending magnets to introduce the transverse-to-longitudinal coupling, which will lead to an inconvenient deflection of the downstream beam line, we propose a scheme using a quadrupole inserted chicane to introduce the longitudinal mixing inside the accelerator transport system to suppress this instability. And we finally eliminate the transverse-to-longitudinal coupling after the dogleg section.