A short-period helical wiggler as an improved source of synchrotron radiation

A new kind of wiggler is proposed as an improved source of synchrotron radiation from high-energy electron storage rings. The electrons are made to travel in a short-period helix by a transverse helical magnetic field. The radiation spectrum produced is calculated and it is shown that the helical wiggler design could produce a total intensity (photons sec−1 per unit bandwidth) improvement of several hundred and a brightness (photons sec−1 per solid angle per unit bandwidth) improvement of 4×104 over the present state of the art in synchrotron radiation sources.