• M.P. Anania, D. Clark, R.C. Issac, D.A. Jaroszynski, A. J. W. Reitsma, G.H. Welsh, S.M. Wiggins
  USTRAT/SUPA, Glasgow
• J.A. Clarke, M.W. Poole, B.J.A. Shepherd
  STFC/DL/ASTeC, Daresbury, Warrington, Cheshire
• M.J. de Loos, S.B. van der Geer
  Pulsar Physics, Eindhoven

Recent progress in developing laser-plasma accelerators is raising the possibility of a compact coherent radiation source that could be housed in a medium sized university department. Beam properties from laser-plasma accelerators have been traditionally considered as not being of sufficient quality to produce amplification. Our work shows that this is not the case. Here we present a study of the beam characteristics of a laser-plasma accelerator. We also highlight the latest results on the ALPHA-X compact FEL. We show how the beam properties of the ALPHA-X beam line have been optimized in order to drive a FEL. We discuss the implementation of a focussing system consisting of a triplet of permanent magnet quadrupoles and a triplet of electromagnetic quadrupoles. The design of these devices has been carried out using the GPT (General Particle Tracer "*") code, which considers space charge effects and allows a realistic estimate of electron beam properties along the beam line. The latest measurements of energy spread and emittance will be presented. Currently we have measured energy spreads less than 0.7% and, using a pepper pot, put an upper limit on the emittance of 5 pi mm mrad.

"*" S.B. van der Geer and M.J. de Loos, “General Particle Tracer code: design, implementation and application” (2001);