Numerical simulation of some systems containing charged particles with highly relativistic directed motion can by speeded up by orders of magnitude by choice of the proper Lorentz-boosted frame. Orders of magnitude speedup has been demonstrated for simulations from first principles of laser-plasma accelerator, free electron laser, and particle beams interacting with electron clouds. Here we address the application of the Lorentz-boosted frame approach to coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR), which can be strongly present in bunch compressor chicanes. CSR is particularly relevant to the next generation of x-ray light sources and is simultaneously difficult to simulate in the lab frame because of the large ratio of scale lengths. It can increase both the incoherent and coherent longitudinal energy spread, effects that often lead to an increase in transverse emittance. We have adapted the WARP code to simulate CSR emission along a simple dipole bend. We present some scaling arguments for the possible computational speed up factor in the boosted frame and initial 3D simulation results.

Part of the overall design effort for x-ray FEL's such as the LCLS and TESLA projects has involved extensive use of particle simulation codes to predict their output performance and underlying sensitivity to various input parameters (e.g. electron beam emittance). This paper discusses some of the numerical issues that must be addressed by simulation codes in this regime. We first give a brief overview of the standard approximations and simulation methods adopted by time-dependent(i.e. polychromatic) codes such as GINGER, GENESIS, and FAST3D, including the effects of temporal discretization and the resultant limited spectral bandpass,and then discuss the accuracies and inaccuracies of these codes in predicting incoherent spontaneous emission (i.e. the extremely low gain regime).

We adapt the "reverse taper" scheme presented by Saldin et al. (Phys. Rev. ST Accel. Beams, 9, 050702 [2006]) for attosecond pulse production to the XUV/soft-xray regime. We find that that GW-level pulses of a few femtosecond duration or shorter can be produced using electron beams of quite moderate parameters and undulators of 20-m length or shorter. The output pulse is significantly shifted in wavelength relative to the main background which permits a further increase in contrast ratio via simple monochromatization. Moreover, the output pulse has a natural wavelength chirp that allows further temporal compression, if wanted. Both positive and negative chirps can be produced depending upon the sign of the undulator taper.

This is Version 1.3 of the manual for the free-electron laser simulation code GINGER and its post-processor.

Numerical simulation of some systems containing charged particles with highly relativistic directed motion can by speeded up by orders of magnitude by choice of the proper Lorentz-boosted frame[1] . A particularly good example is that of short wavelength free-electron lasers (FELs) in which a high energy electron beam interacts with a static magnetic undulator. In the optimal boost frame with Lorentz factor gamma_F , the red-shifted FEL radiation and blue shifted undulator have identical wavelengths and the number of required time-steps (presuming the Courant condition applies) decreases by a factor of 2(gamma_F)**2 for fully electromagnetic simulation. We have adapted the WARP code [2] to apply this method to several FEL problems involving coherent spontaneous emission (CSE) from pre-bunched ebeams, including that in a biharmonic undulator.