Pseudo-Single-Bunch with Adjustable Frequency

A major limitation of synchrotron light sources is the ability to easily serve two classes of experiments simultaneously, namely brightness or flux-limited experiments and timing experiments. High brightness experiments require filling most of the rf buckets with electrons, thus maximizing the total current while minimizing the current per bunch. In such a multibunch filling pattern, the bunch spacing is typically only a few nanoseconds between electron bunches. On the other hand, timing experiments require longer times between X-ray pulses. For example, in the case of laser-pump X-ray-probe timing experiments, it is desirable to have only one X-ray pulse per laser pulse. Since such lasers operate between kHz and MHz rates, this implies a distance between pulses of ms to μs. Presently, high-speed, high-power choppers are used to temporally isolate light from single bunches. However, such choppers are complicated and expensive.