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For a long time the necessity of having intense positron beams to get a high rate of events with fixed targets as with e+e− collisions, led to conventional positron sources using high energy and high intensity electron beams generating bremsstrahlung photons in thick high Z targets. The inconveniences for such scheme, heat load and large emittance, are underlined. Alternative ways aiming to provide a high number of photons impinging on rather thin conversion targets have been developed: they are using magnetic undulators, laser Compton backscattering and channeling radiation in axially oriented crystals. A brief description of these methods is given. However, the emphasis is put here on the channeling radiation. The advantages of channeling radiation, described by M.Kumakhov and others, were confirmed by many simulations and experiments. We are reporting, hereafter, on two schemes: positron all-crystal converters involving thick crystals where photon radiation and e+e− pair creation are occurring in the crystal and hybrid sources where the two functions are separated. With the hybrid scheme, including a thin crystal-radiator and a thick amorphous-converter, the heat load and the local deposited energy density can be lowered. Simulations and experiments related to these two schemes are reported. Further developments concerning the converter, granular instead of bulk, are providing additional advantages. The promising, already gathered results led to consider these kinds of positron sources for future e-e+ colliders. More physicists, from different laboratories, concerned by the studies on positron sources are now contributing in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A new kind of positron sources for future linear colliders, where the converter is an aligned tungsten crystal, oriented on the 〈111〉-axis, has been studied at CERN in the WA103 experiment with tertiary electron beams from the SPS. In such sources the photons resulting from channeling radiation and coherent bremsstrahlung create the e+e− pairs. Electron beams, of 6 and 10GeV, were impinging on different kinds of targets: a 4mm thick crystal, a 8mm thick crystal and a compound target made of 4mm crystal followed by 4mm amorphous disk. An amorphous tungsten target 20mm thick was also used for the sake of comparison with the 8mm crystal and to check the ability of the detection system to provide the correct track reconstruction. The charged particles coming out from the target were detected in a drift chamber immersed partially in a magnetic field. The reconstruction of the particle trajectories provided the energy and angular spectrum of the positrons in a rather wide energy range (up to 150MeV) and angular domain (up to 30°). The experimental approach presented in this article provides a full description of this kind of source. A presentation of the measured positron distribution in momentum space (longitudinal versus transverse) is given to allow an easy determination of the available yield for a given momentum acceptance. Results on photons, measured downstream of the positron detector, are also presented. A significant enhancement of photon and positron production is clearly observed. This enhancement, for a 10GeV incident beam, is of 4 for the 4mm thick crystal and larger than 2 for the 8mm thick crystal. Another important result concerns the validation of the simulations for the crystals, for which a quite good agreement was met between the simulations and the experiment, for positrons as well as for photons. These results are presented after a short presentation of the experimental setup and of the track reconstruction procedure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]