Design of a compact application-oriented free-electron laser

The goal of the Advanced Free-Electron Laser Project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory is to demonstrate that a free-electron laser (FEL) suitable for industrial, medical, and research applications can be built. This FEL system should be efficient, compact, robust, and user-friendly. To achieve this goal, we have incorporated advanced components presently available. Electrons produced by a photoelectron source are accelerated to 20 MeV by a high-brightness accelerator. They are transported by an emittance-preserving beamline with permanent-magnet quadrupoles and dipoles. The electron beam has excellent instantaneous beam quality better than 2.5 π mm mrad in transverse emittance and 0.3% in energy spread at a peak current up to 310 A. It is used to excite an FEL oscillator with a pulsed-current microwiggler. Including operation at higher harmonics, the laser wavelength extends from 3.7μm to 0.4μm. (Author) 6 figs., 6 refs