High average power lasers for future particle accelerators

Abstract

Lasers are of increasing interest to the accelerator community and include applications as diverse as stripping electrons from hydrogen atoms, sources for Compton scattering, efficient high repetition rate lasers for dielectric laser acceleration, peta-watt peak power lasers for laser wake field and high energy, short pulse lasers for proton and ion beam therapy. The laser requirements for these applications are briefly surveyed. State of the art of laser technologies with the potential to eventually meet those requirements are reviewed. These technologies include diode pumped solid state lasers (including cryogenic), fiber lasers, OPCPA based lasers and Ti:Sapphire lasers. Strengths and weakness of the various technologies are discussed along with the most important issues to address to get from the current state of the art to the performance needed for the accelerator applications. Efficiency issues are considered in detail as in most cases the system efficiency is a valuable indicator of the actual ability of a given technology to deliver the application requirements.