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Magnetic Chicane Bunch Compressors

Four dipoles can form a chicane, a device commonly used to compress electron bunches longitudinally. In the chicane the faster particles in the beam travel along shorter trajectories:

If the bunch is properly chirped in the linac before the chicane entrance, so that the more energetic particles are in the tail of the bunch, an overall bunch compression can be achieved:

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Linear compression coefficient R56 is defined by the chicane geometry

;

whereas, 2nd order compression coefficient T566 is generally insignificant, yet can be artificially enhanced - by offsetting a beam central energy E - to compensate for the electron beam longitudinal phase space curvature due to the space charge.