BNL, Upton, Long Island, New York
The Source Development Lab (SDL) at the NSLS of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is the only facility in the world now capable of performing the laser seeded FEL R&D, such as high gain harmonic generation (HGHG) and direct laser seeded FEL amplifier. A laser seeded FEL amplifier experiment @ 800 nm was initiated at the SDL to demonstrate the critical FEL amplifier technologies for high average power applications. The recent experimental results of the laser seeded FEL amplifier will be presented in this talk. We have achieved more than 4 orders of magnitude of the FEL gain over the seed laser, and measured record FEL output energy of more than 500 μJ. We experimentally demonstrated the FEL guiding and efficiency improvement by frequency detuning. We have experimentally observed nonlinear evolution of the femto-seconds FEL pulse both in exponential gain and superradiance regimes.
