Measurement of femtosecond electron bunches using a rf zero-phasing method

Bunch lengths as short as 84 fs (rms) have been measured at Jefferson Laboratory using a rf zero-phasing technique. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first accurate measurement of the longitudinal distribution function in this regime. In this paper, an analytical approach for computing the longitudinal distribution function and bunch length is described for arbitrary longitudinal and transverse distributions for the case where the intrinsic energy spread of the bunch is small compared to the correlated energy spread imparted by zero-phasing cavities. The measurement results are presented, which are in excellent agreement with numerical simulations.