ABCD formalism and attosecond few-cycle pulse via chirp manipulation of a seeded free electron laser.

An ABCD formalism is identified to characterize a seeded Free Electron Laser (FEL) with three chirps: an initial frequency chirp in the seed Laser, an energy chirp in the electron bunch, and an intrinsic frequency chirp due to the FEL process. A scheme of generating attosecond few-cycle pulses is proposed by invoking an FEL seeded by high-order harmonic generation (HHG) from an infrared laser. The HHG seed has generic attosecond structure. It is possible to manipulate these three chirps to maintain the attosecond structure via post-undulator chirped pulse compression.