Full characterization of RF compressed femtosecond electron pulses using ponderomotive scattering.

High bunch charge, femtosecond, electron pulses were generated using a 95 kV electron gun with an S-band RF rebunching cavity. Laser ponderomotive scattering in a counter-propagating beam geometry is shown to provide high sensitivity with the prerequisite spatial and temporal resolution to fully characterize, in situ, both the temporal profile of the electron pulses and RF time timing jitter. With the current beam parameters, we determined a temporal Instrument Response Function (IRF) of 430 fs FWHM. The overall performance of our system is illustrated through the high-quality diffraction data obtained for the measurement of the electron-phonon relaxation dynamics for Si (001).