From Electron Beams to Photon Beams

n this article I try to report at the best the events and the emotions I experienced, together with my colleagues, when I was a young researcher working at the Frascati Center of CNEN. In the middle of 70's the high energy physics activities carried out in Frascati were transferred from CNEN to INFN (Istituto Nazionale Fisica Nucleare) and the personnel had the chance to chose to continue to work at the CNEN (obviously in a different research field) or to continue to work in high energy physics, but at the INFN. I decided to remain at the CNEN and, consequently, I had to change my research activity. I moved from the high energy accelerators research field to the lasers research field in which, at that time at the CNEN, a new interesting project on "uranium laser isotope separation" was just starting. This article is focused on the theoretical and experimental development activity, carried out in the years 70's-80's at the CNEN Frascati Center, on a quite particular kind of laser to be utilized in that project. In this laser the active medium is not made of atoms or molecules but is a beam of free electrons running along a spatially periodic magnetic structure: this laser is the "Free Electron Laser"