• S.V. Benson, K. Beard, C.P. Behre, G.H. Biallas, J. Boyce, D. Douglas, H.F.D. Dylla, R. Evans, A.G. Grippo, J.G. Gubeli, D. Hardy, C. Hernandez-Garcia, K. Jordan, L. Merminga, G. Neil, J.P. Preble, M.D. Shinn, T. Siggins, R.L. Walker, G.P. Williams, S. Zhang
  Jefferson Lab, Newport News, Virginia
• N. Nishimori
  JAEA/FEL, Ibaraki-ken

Funding: This work supported by the Office of Naval Research, the Joint Technology Office, the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the US Army Night Vision Laboratory, and by DOE Contract DE-AC05-84ER40150.

After demonstrating 10 kW operation with 1 second pulses, the Jefferson Lab program switched to demonstrating high power operation at short wavelengths using a new 8 cm period wiggler and a THz suppression chicane. We report here on the lasing results to date using this new configuration. We have demonstrated a large reduction in THz heating on the mirrors. We have also eliminated heating in the mirror steering assemblies, making operation at high power much more stable. Finally, we have greatly reduced astigmatism in the optical cavity, allowing operation with a very short Rayleigh range. The laser has been tuned from 0.9 to 3.1 microns using the new wiggler. User experiments commenced in April of 2005 with the FEL Upgrade operating over the 1-3 micron range. We are in the process of installing a 5.5 cm permanent magnet wiggler that will give us even larger tuning range and higher power.

Corresponding author: Tel: 1-757-269-5026; fax: 1-757-269-5519; E-mail address: felman@jlab.org

• L. Merminga
  Jefferson Lab, Newport News, Virginia

Funding: Work supported by the US DoE contract No. DE-AC05-84ER40150.

Successfully operating, pioneering Energy Recovery Linac (ERL) – based Free Electron Lasers (FELs) have paved the way towards powerful and highly efficient accelerators based on the principle of energy recovery. Pursued and envisioned ERL applications worldwide include high brilliance light sources for the production of both spontaneous and FEL radiation, high-energy electron cooling devices, and electron-ion colliders. The required electron source parameters, average beam current and beam energy of the proposed applications are a significant extrapolation from demonstrated performance. We present an overview of the accelerator physics and technology challenges encountered in the design of the various ERL projects around the world, as well as progress and development plans to achieving the required performance.