A tunable plasma-based energy dechirper

A tunable plasma-based energy dechirper has been developed at FLASHForward to remove the correlated energy spread of a 681~MeV electron bunch. Through the interaction of the bunch with wakefields excited in plasma the projected energy spread was reduced from a FWHM of 1.31$\%$ to 0.33$\%$ without reducing the stability of the incoming beam. The experimental results for variable plasma density are in good agreement with analytic predictions and three-dimensional simulations. The proof-of-principle dechirping strength of $1.8$~GeV/mm/m significantly exceeds those demonstrated for competing state-of-the-art techniques and may be key to future plasma wakefield-based free-electron lasers and high energy physics facilities, where large intrinsic chirps need to be removed.