Recirculating accelerator driver for a high-power free-electron laser: a design overview

Jefferson Lab is building a free-electron laser (FEL) to produce continuous-wave (cw), kW-level light at 3-6 μm wavelength. A superconducting linac will drive the laser, generating a 5 mA average current, 42 MeV energy electron beam. A transport lattice will recirculate the beam back to the linac for deceleration and conversion of about 75% of its power into rf power. Bunch charge will range up to 135 pC, and bunch lengths will range down to 1 ps in parts of the transport lattice. Accordingly, the space charge in the injector and coherent synchrotron radiation in magnetic bends come into play. The machine will thus enable studying these phenomena as a precursor to designing compact accelerators of high-brightness beams. The FEL is scheduled to be installed in its own facility by 1 October 1997. Given the short schedule, the machine design is conservative, based on modifications of the CEBAF cryomodule and MIT-Bates transport lattice. This paper surveys the machine design