Time-dependent simulation of the gas attenuator for the LCLS-II X-ray FEL's under high beam power operations

Time-dependent simulation was carried out to study the dynamic response of a gas-based attenuator system designed for the LCLS-II high repetition rate X-ray Free-electron Laser's, and to further elucidate the impact of the fluctuating energies of proceeding pulses on the actual attenuation factor achieved for the trailing pulses. The filamentation effect in the gas density revealed from an earlier steady-state calculation under a constant Continuous-Wave input power was reproduced with additional ramping behavior and oscillations arising from the onset and the pulsed structure of the beam. More importantly, the actual achieved attenuation for a given pulse was found to vary randomly in response to the fluctuations in the input power.