Flexible pulse delay control up to picosecond for high-intensity twin electron bunches

Two closely spaced electron bunches have attracted strong interest due to their applications in two color X-ray free-electron lasers as well as witness bunch acceleration in plasmas and dielectric structures. In this paper, we propose a new scheme of delay system to vary the time delay up to several picoseconds while not affecting the bunch compression. Numerical simulations based on the Linac Coherent Light Source are performed to demonstrate the feasibility of this method.