Beam Dynamics Studies and Instrumentation Tests for Bunch Length Measurements at CLEAR

A new CERN Linear Electron Accelerator for Research (named CLEAR) has been installed as a general-purpose user facility to study novel accelerating techniques, high-gradient structures, instrumentation and irradiation experiments. CLEAR is a flexible accelerator that can provide high quality bunched electron beams with a wide range of beam parameters up to an energy of 220 MeV, offering several testing capabilities. Among all the potential applications, novel accelerating techniques, such as plasma acceleration and THz generation are considered. These applications require shorter bunches, down to the 100 fs level. This paper reports on beam dynamics studies and instrumentation tests to establish a bunch length of this order in CLEAR. The short bunches are generated using adiabatic bunching in the first accelerating structure. For bunch length diagnostic CLEAR is equipped with a streak camera and a transverse deflecting cavity. Alternatively a phase-scan of the last accelerating structure could be used as well to estimate the bunch length. The experimental results with respect to these different techniques are presented and compared with simulations.