Electronic modulation of the fel-oscillator radiation power driven by ERL

FEL oscillators usually operate in CW mode and produce periodic train of radiation pulses but some user experiments require modulation of radiation power. Conventional way to obtain this modulation is using of mechanical shutters but it cannot provide very short switching time and may lead to decreasing of the radiation beam quality. Another way could be based on the electron beam current modulation but it cannot be used in the ERL. We propose a simple way of fast control of the FEL lasing which is based on periodic phase shift of electron bunches with respect to radiation stored in optical cavity. The phase shift required to suppress lasing is relatively small and it does not change significantly repetition rate. This approach has been realized at NovoFEL facility. It allows to generate radiation macropulses of desirable length down to several microseconds (limited by quality factor of optical cavity and FEL gain) which can be synchronized with external trigger. We present detailed description of electronic power modulation scheme and discuss the results of experiments.