Advanced Methods for Temporal Reconstruction of Modulated Electron Bunches

We describe optimizations of phase-retrieval algorithms for the reconstruction of the temporal structure of highly modulated electron bunches from coherent transition radiation (CTR) spectra. Synthetic data is used to quantitatively analyze capabilities and limitations of the approach taking into account realistic bandwidth constraints of ultra-broadband spectrometers. Established algorithms are combined with information from independent channels as charge calibrated electron spectra and absolute intensity calibration of the spectrometer. With this set of data, in principle available in experiments, we demonstrate a promising fidelity for the detailed analysis of substructured laser wakefield accelerated electron bunches.