Performance study of high bandwidth pickups installed at FLASH and ELBE for femtosecond-precision arrival time monitors

At today’s free-electron lasers, high-resolution electron bunch arrival time measurements become increasingly more important in fast feedback systems for a timing jitter reduction down to the femtosecond level as well as for time-resolved pump-probe experiments. This is fulfilled by arrival time monitors which employ an electro-optical detection scheme by means of synchronised ultrashort laser pulses. Even more, at FLASH and the European XFEL the measurement has to cover a wide range of bunch charges from 1 nC down to 20 pC with equally sub-10fs resolution. To meet these requirements, recently a high bandwidth pickup electrode with a cut-off frequency above 40 GHz has been developed. These pickups are installed at the free-electron laser FLASH and at the continuous wave electron accelerator ELBE. In this paper we present an evaluation of the pickup performance by direct signal measurements with high bandwidth oscilloscopes. The integration of these pickups into the arrival time monitor system is described.