COHERENT HARMONIC-GENERATION IN VUV WITH THE OPTICAL KLYSTRON ON THE STORAGE RING SUPER-ACO

The goal of this experiment is to explore the possibility of producing coherent light in the VUV spectral range using the nonlinear properties of the free electron laser gain that result when an electron beam is bunched by an external pulsed laser. The positive results, that have been obtained in 1987 on the old storage ring ACO, have lead us to install an experiment on Super-ACO, but with some modifications. This article presents the most recent results obtained on Super-ACO, where coherent photons have been produced at the 3rd (177 nm) and 5th (106 nm) harmonics of the incident laser. It presents also a brief summary of the practical interest and difficulties of this technique.