Prototype of the Improved Electro-Optical Unit for the Bunch Arrival Time Monitors at FLASH and the European XFEL

At today’s free-electron lasers, high-resolution electron bunch arrival time measurements have become increasingly more important in fast feedback systems providing accurate timing stability for time-resolved pump-probe experiments and seeding schemes. At FLASH and the upcoming European XFEL a reliable and precise arrival time detection down to the femtosecond level has to cover a broad range of bunch charges, which may even change from 1 nC down to 20 pC within a bunch train. This is fulfilled by arrival time monitors which employ an electro-optical detection scheme by means of synchronised ultra-short laser pulses. At both facilities, the new bunch arrival time monitor has to cope with the special operation mode where the MHz repetition rate bunch train is separated into several segments for different SASE beam lines. Each of the segments will exhibit individual timing jitter characteristics since they are generated from different injector lasers and can be accelerated with individual energy gain settings. In this paper, we describe the recent improvements of the electro-optical unit developed for the bunch arrival time monitors to be installed in both facilities.