Abstract
This paper describes the design, construction, and initial operation of an infrared FEL designed for 1 kW average power. The experiment utilizes the existing advanced free-electron laser (AFEL) accelerator. An expected 6% extraction efficiency of electron beam power to optical power gives an overall wall- plug efficiency of approximately 1%. The 10 to 20 MeV electron accelerator is 1.2 m long. This regenerative amplifier FEL (RAFEL) relies on a few (less than ten) passes to reach saturation. The technique is similar to a FEL oscillator through the use of optical feedback to reach saturation. However, in this design the feedback is limited to less than 1% in the large signal regime. The chief advantage to this approach is that no mirror is exposed to a high peak intensity, enabling high-average power in a compact optical configuration. To compensate for the low optical feedback, the single-pass gain must be very high. In our design, the single- pass gain is 10<SUP>5</SUP> in the small signal regime. RAFEL is presently configured to operate at a wavelength near 16 microns. However, this system is scaleable to shorter wavelengths by increasing beam energy. Present results indicate that a single pass gain of 60 in the infrared has been observed.
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