Mechanical design of a dielectric wakefield dechirper system for clara

STFC Daresbury Laboratory are developing a compact electron beam energy dechirper system, based on dielectric wakefield structure, for the on-site electron accelerator CLARA (Compact Linear Accelerator for Research and Applications). CLARA will be an experimental free electron laser (FEL) facility operating at 250MeV and will be a test bed for a variety of novel FEL schemes. The dechirper dielectric quartz plates will induce wakefields within the structure which can remove the beam chirp that is initially introduced to compress the electron bunch longitudinally. Removing or adjusting the amount of chirp enables researchers to reduce or adjust the bunch energy/momentum spread, expanding the FEL capabilities. The attachment and alignment of the quartz plates present numerous mechanical design challenges that require high precision manufacturing and quartz plate positioning via fiducialisation. This paper will review the dechirper specifications, the chosen design solutions, measured mechanical performance, and the expected effect of the dechirper on CLARA FEL operation.