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This report describes the scientific aims and potentials as well as the preliminary technical design of IRIDE, an innovative tool for multi-disciplinary investigations in a wide field of scientific, technological and industrial applications. IRIDE will be a high intensity 'particle factory', based on a combination of a high duty cycle radio-frequency superconducting electron linac and of high energy lasers. Conceived to provide unique research possibilities for particle physics, for condensed matter physics, chemistry and material science, for structural biology and industrial applications, IRIDE will open completely new research possibilities and advance our knowledge in many branches of science and technology. IRIDE will contribute to open new avenues of discoveries and to address most important riddles: What does matter consist of? What is the structure of proteins that have a fundamental role in life processes? What can we learn from protein structure to improve the treatment of diseases and to design more efficient drugs? But also how does an electronic chip behave under the effect of radiations? How can the heat flow in a large heat exchanger be optimized? The scientific potential of IRIDE is far reaching and justifies the construction of such a large facility in Italy in synergy with the national research institutes and companies and in the framework of the European and international research. It will impact also on R&D work for ILC, FEL, and will be complementarity to other large scale accelerator projects. IRIDE is also intended to be realized in subsequent stages of development depending on the assigned priorities., Comment: 270 pages

In arXiv:1202.0691, Geloni et al. criticise our recent work describing the spontaneous emission by a relativistic, undulating electron beam. In particular they claim that our prediction of a quantum regime in which evolution of the electron momentum distribution occurs as a sequential population of discrete momentum groups rather than in terms of a drift-diffusion process is unphysical and artificial. We show that the criticism of our model contained in arXiv:1202.0691 is unfounded.

Current models of the effect of spontaneous emission on the electron beam dynamics neglect the discreteness of electron recoil associated with photon emission. We present a novel, one-dimensional model of the effect of spontaneous emission on the electron beam dynamics in an undulator both in the classical regime where discrete electron recoil is negligible, and the quantum regime where it is significant. It is shown that in the classical regime, continuous decrease of the average electron energy and diffusive growth of the electron energy spread occurs, in agreement with previous classical models. In the quantum regime, it is shown that the evolution of the electron momentum distribution occurs as discrete momentum groups according to a Poisson distribution. The narrow momentum features of the quantum regime may be useful for generation of coherent radiation, which relies on electron beams having sufficiently narrow momentum/energy distributions., Comment: This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in EPL. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available online at doi:10.1209/0295-5075/94/34002

Using the Madelung transformation we show that in a quantum Free Electron Laser (QFEL) the beam obeys the equations of a quantum fluid in which the potential is the classical potential plus a quantum potential. The classical limit is shown explicitly., Comment: 6 pages, no figures

In this paper we optimize the experimental parameters to operate a Free Electron Laser with a laser wiggler in the Angstrom region. We show that the quantum regime of the Self Amplified Spontaneous Emission (Quantum SASE) may be reached with realistic parameters. The classical SASE regime is also discussed and compared with the quantum regime., Comment: submitted to Phys.Rev.ST-AB

We describe a free-electron laser (FEL) in the Self Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) regime quantizing the electron motion and taking into account propagation effects. We demonstrate quantum purification of the SASE spectrum, i.e., in a properly defined quantum regime the spiking behavior disappears and the SASE power spectrum becomes very narrow., Comment: to appear on NIM-A

We show that many features of the recent experiments of Schneble et al. [D. Schneble, Y. Torii, M. Boyd, E.W. Streed, D.E. Pritchard and W. Ketterle, Science vol. 300, p. 475 (2003)], which demonstrate two different regimes of light scattering by a Bose-Einstein condensate, can be described using a one-dimensional mean-field quantum CARL model, where optical amplification occurs simultaneously with the production of a periodic density modulation in the atomic medium. The two regimes of light scattering observed in these experiments, originally described as ``Kapiza-Dirac scattering'' and ``Superradiant Rayleigh scattering'', can be interpreted as the semiclassical and quantum limits respectively of CARL lasing., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures - to appear in Journal of Optics B

Free Electron Laser (FEL) and Collective Atomic Recoil Laser (CARL) are described by the same model of classical equations for properly defined scaled variables. These equations are extended to the quantum domain describing the particle's motion by a Schr\"{o}dinger equation coupled to a self-consistent radiation field. The model depends on a single collective parameter $\bar \rho$ which represents the maximum number of photons emitted per particle. We demonstrate that the classical model is recovered in the limit $\bar \rho\gg 1$, in which the Wigner function associated to the Schr\"{o}dinger equation obeys to the classical Vlasov equation. On the contrary, for $\bar \rho\le 1$, a new quantum regime is obtained in which both FELs and CARLs behave as a two-state system coupled to the self-consistent radiation field and described by Maxwell-Bloch equations.

Networks of globally coupled oscillators exhibit phase transitions from incoherent to coherent states. Atoms interacting with the counterpropagating modes of a unidirectionally pumped high-finesse ring cavity form such a globally coupled network. The coupling mechanism is provided by collective atomic recoil lasing (CARL), i.e. cooperative Bragg scattering of laser light at an atomic density grating, which is self-induced by the laser light. Under the rule of an additional friction force, the atomic ensemble is expected to undergo a phase transition to a state of synchronized atomic motion. We present the experimental investigation of this phase transition by studying the threshold behavior of the CARL process., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

We extend the Collective Atomic Recoil Lasing (CARL) model including the effects of friction and diffusion forces acting on the atoms due to the presence of optical molasses fields. The results from this model are consistent with those from a recent experiment by Kruse et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 183601 (2003)]. In particular, we obtain a threshold condition above which collective backscattering occurs. Using a nonlinear analysis we show that the backscattered field and the bunching evolve to a steady-state, in contrast to the non-stationary behaviour of the standard CARL model. For a proper choice of the parameters, this steady-state can be superfluorescent., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PRA

We investigate the effects of the atomic interaction in the Superradiant Rayleigh scattering from a Bose-Einstein condensate driven by a far-detuned laser beam. We show that for a homogeneous atomic sample the atomic interaction has only a dispersive effect, whereas in the inhomogeneous case it may increase the decay of the matter-wave grating., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, presented to the XII International Laser Physics Workshop, August 24-29, Hamburg, to be published in Laser Physics

We investigate the interaction of a moving BEC with a far detuned laser beam. Superradiant Rayleigh scattering arises from the spontaneous formation of a matter-wave grating due to the interference of two wavepackets with different momenta. The system is described by the CARL-BEC model which is a generalization of the Gross-Pitaevskii model to include the self-consistent evolution of the scattered field. The experiment gives evidence of a damping of the matter-wave grating which depends on the initial velocity of the condensate. We describe this damping in terms of a phase-diffusion decoherence process, in good agreement with the experimental results.

We propose a realistic scheme for measuring the micromaser linewidth by monitoring the phase diffusion dynamics of the cavity field. Our strategy consists in exciting an initial coherent state with the same photon number distribution as the micromaser steady-state field, singling out a purely diffusive process in the system dynamics. After the injection of a counter-field, measurements of the population statistics of a probe atom allow us to derive the micromaser linewidth. Our proposal aims at solving a classic and relevant decoherence problem in cavity quantum electrodynamics, allowing to establish experimentally the distinctive features appearing in the micromaser spectrum due to the discreteness of the electromagnetic field., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Submitted for publication

We extend the semiclassical model of the collective atomic recoil laser (CARL) to include the quantum mechanical description of the center-of-mass motion of the atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). We show that when the average atomic momentum is less than the recoil momentum $\hbar\vec q$, the CARL equations reduce to the Maxwell-Bloch equations for two momentum levels. In the conservative regime (no radiation losses), the quantum model depends on a single collective parameter, $\rho$, that can be interpreted as the average number of photons scattered per atom in the classical limit. When $\rho\gg 1$, the semiclassical CARL regime is recovered, with many momentum levels populated at saturation. On the contrary, when $\rho\le 1$, the average momentum oscillates between zero and $\hbar\vec q$, and a periodic train of $2\pi$ hyperbolic secant pulses is emitted. In the dissipative regime (large radiation losses) and in a suitable quantum limit, a sequential superfluorescence scattering occurs, in which after each process atoms emit a $\pi$ hyperbolic secant pulse and populate a lower momentum state. These results describe the regular arrangement of the momentum pattern observed in recent experiments of superradiant Rayleigh scattering from a BEC., Comment: submitted for publication on Phys. Rev. A

A semi-classical theory of coherent light scattering from an elongated sample of cold atoms exposed to an off-resonant laser beam is presented. The model, which is a direct extension of that of the collective atomic recoil laser (CARL), describes the emission of two superradiant pulses along the sample's major axis simultaneous with the formation of a bidimensional atomic grating inside the sample. It provides a simple physical picture of the recent observation of collective light scattering from a Bose-Einstein condensate [S. Inouye et al., Science N.285, p. 571 (1999)]. In addition, the model provides an analytical description of the temporal evolution of the scattered light intensity which shows good quantitative agreement with the experimental results of Inouye et al., Comment: submitted to Optics Communications, LaTex version, 2 postscript figures

We consider the case when decoherence is due to the fluctuations of some classical variable or parameter of a system and not to its entanglement with the environment. Under few and quite general assumptions, we derive a model-independent formalism for this non-dissipative decoherence, and we apply it to explain the decoherence observed in some recent experiments in cavity QED and on trapped ions., Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures