Giant laser pulses in the Duke storage ring UV FEL

We have studied the dynamics of giant pulse generation in the Duke UV FEL with peak power of several gigawatts. The giant pulses will be provided by a FEL gain modulation technique developed for the OK-4 UV FEL at Novosibirsk, Russia. A new mechanism for “super-pulse” generation was discovered during these studies. It allows the generation of peak power up to 10 GW using the “phase space” refreshment of the electron beam caused by synchrotron motion [V. Litvinenko et al., to be published]. We have developed a new macro-particle code for giant pulse simulation including all known mechanisms of storage ring FEL interaction. Results of these giant pulse simulations are presented in the paper.