An experimental study of an FEL oscillator with a linear taper

Motivated by the work of Saldin, Schneidmiller and Yurkov, we have measured the detuning curve widths, spectral characteristics, efficiency, and energy spread as a function of the taper for low and high Q resonators in the IR Demo FEL at Jefferson Lab. Both positive and negative tapers were used. Gain and frequency agreed surprisingly well with the predictions of a single mode theory. The efficiency agreed reasonably well for a negative taper with a high Q resonator but disagreed for lower Q values both due to the large slippage parameter and the non-ideal resonator Q. We saw better efficiency for a negative taper than for the same positive taper. The energy spread induced in the beam, normalized to the efficiency is larger for the positive taper than for the corresponding negative taper. This indicates that a negative taper is preferred over a positive taper in an energy recovery FEL.