Experimental Work with Photonic Band Gap Fiber: Building a Laser Electron Accelerator

In the laser acceleration project E-163 at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, work is being done toward building a traveling wave accelerator that uses as its accelerating structure a length of photonic band gap fiber. The small scale of the optical fiber allows radiation at optical wavelengths to be used to provide the necessary accelerating energy. Optical wavelength driving energy in a small structure yields higher accelerating fields. The existence of a speed-of-light accelerating mode in a photonic band gap fiber has been calculated previously. This paper presents an overview of several of the experimental challenges posed in the development of the proposed photonic band gap fiber accelerator system