An elliptically-polarizing undulator with phase adjustable energy and polarization

The authors present a planar helical undulator designed to produce elliptically polarized light. Helical magnetic fields may be produced by a variety of undulators with four parallel cassettes of magnets. In their design, all cassettes are mounted in two planes on slides so that they may be moved parallel to the electron beam. This allows the undulator to produce x-rays of left- or right-handed elliptical or circular polarization as well as horizontal or vertical linear polarization. In model calculations, they have found that by sliding the top pair of rows with respect to the bottom pair, or the left pair with respect to the right pair, they retain the polarization setting but change the magnetic field strength, and hence the x-ray energy. This allows them to select both energy and polarization by independent phase adjustments alone, without changing the gap between the rows. Such a design may be simpler to construct than an adjustable gap machine. The authors present calculations that model its operation and its effects on an electron beam