Abstract

This paper reports several aspects of work to evaluate the laser technology available for laser accelerator applications. Included is a method for determining the laser system requirements based on the desired accelerator luminosity and electron-beam constraints imposed by brightness, emittance, beam disruption and “beamstrahlung.” Scaling for the laser, parameters such as average power, energy per pulse, rep rate, pulse length, and peak power are derived starting from the desired electron final energy and the luminosity. It is found that the electron-beam bunch diameter is a critical parameter that must be made small (≪1 μm) if the total laser power required is to be minimized. Furthermore, reducing the bunch diameter also reduces the total energy per pulse. The advantage of lower laser power comes at the expense of a higher repetition rate to maintain a given luminosity. An interesting result is that the luminosity does not scale as the laser average power but instead as P_av/(E_l)^1/4, where E_l is the laser energy per pulse.

© 1985 Optical Society of America