Compact light sources: perspectives and applications

Full text: Nowadays, due to drastic development of accelerator technology, new concepts of compact light sources become feasible. Currently three different types of compact sources are in commissioning or in the planning phase, which reach flux and brilliance values comparable to 2nd generation synchrotron light sources. The first one - MIRRORCLE - is based on a very compact synchrotron, which generate synchrotron radiation in the IR/UV range as well as hard x-ray 'Bremsstrahlung' by inserting different targets. On contrary the second LYNCEAN and the third concept MIT are both based on the relativistic Compton effect, which allows to produce hard x-rays up to 60 keV by using MeV synchrotron rings or only linear electron accelerators combined with a high power IR-laser. In this presentation an overview of these different concepts is given and the potential applications of such sources are discussed. (author)