LOS-ALAMOS ADVANCED FREE-ELECTRON LASER

Los Alamos researchers are building a free-electron laser (FEL) for industrial, medical, and research applications. This FEL, which will incorporate many of the new technologies developed over the last decade, will be compact, robust, and user-friendly. Electrons produced by a photocathode will be accelerated to 20 MeV by a high-brightness accelerator and transported by permanent-magnet quadrupoles and dipoles. The resulting electron beam will have an excellent instantaneous beam quality of 10-pi-mm mrad in transverse emittance and 0.3% in energy spread at a peak current up to 300 A. Including operation at higher harmonics, the laser wavelength extends from 3.7-mu-m to 0.4-mu-m.