Investigations of Electron-beam Microbunching and Beam Coalignment Using Ctr in a High-gain Sase Fel*

We recently extended our experiments on z-dependent electron-beam microbunching using coherent transition radiation (CTR) into the high-gain, self-amplified spontaneous emission free-electron laser (FEL) regime. The UV-visible FEL at the Advanced Photon Source was operated at 530 nm and 385 nm using the bunchcompressed photocathode gun electron beam, linac, and 21.6 m of undulator length. The longitudinal microbunching of the electron beam was tracked by inserting a metal foil and a mirror after each of the nine 2.4-m-long undulators. The visible CTR generated by the electron-beam interaction was imaged and analyzed for zdependent intensity, angular distribution, and spot size. Additionally, the image centroids and structures were used in evaluating the critical electron beam/photon beam overlap issue as a complement to the trajectory data from the beam position monitors.