Free electron laser system with 4 MJ flash energy for the laser fusion reactor driver

This paper presents the further development of a concept of a FEL based for commercial inertial confinement fusion reactor [1-3[. We have shown technical feasibility of constructing a laser system with the following parameters: laser light wavelength 0.5 μm, flash energy 4 MJ, repetition rate 10 pps and net efficiency 10%. It becomes possible due to the use of a novel scheme of optical power summation. The driving beam for the FEL amplifier is produced by the accelerator complex consisting of four 3 GeV RF linear accelerators operating at RF frequency of 500 MHz, repetition rate of 10 pps and 0.3 ms pulse duration. Peculiar feature of the scheme is that it requires relatively low current RF accelerators (with the average over macroimpulse current about 4 A). Also we analyze in detail technical feasibility of the proposed scheme and estimate the cost of the driver. 12 refs., 15 figs., 6 tabs