The use of coherent transition radiation autocorrelation methods to determine bunch length and profile information is examined with the compressed electron beam at the BNL ATF. A bi-gaussian fit is applied to coherent transition radiation auto-correl
ation data to extract the longitudinal current distribution. The effects of large transverse beam sizes are studied in theory and compared to experimental results. A suitable form of the correction factor is derived for beams with large transverse-longitudinal aspect ratios.
Recent initiatives in ultra-short, GeV electron beam generation have focused on achieving sub-fs pulses for driving X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) in single-spike mode. This scheme employs very low charge beams, which may allow existing FEL inject
ors to produce few-100 as pulses, with high brightness. Towards this end, recent experiments at SLAC have produced ~2 fs rms, low transverse emittance, 20 pC electron pulses. Here we examine use of such pulses to excite plasma wakefields exceeding 1 TV/m. We present a focusing scheme capable of producing ~200 nm beam sizes, where the surface Coulomb fields are also ~TV/m. These conditions access a new regime for high field atomic physics, allowing frontier experiments, including sub-fs plasma formation for wake excitation.
