The LACARA Vacuum Laser Accelerator Experiment: Beam Positioning and Alignment in a Strong Magnetic Field.

LACARA (laser cyclotron auto-resonance accelerator) is a vacuum laser accelerator of electrons that is under construction at the Accelerator Test Facility (ATF), Brookhaven National Laboratory. It is expected that the experiment will be assembled by September 2006; this paper presents progress towards this goal. According to numerical studies, as an electron bunch moves along the LACARA solenoidal magnetic field (∼5.2 T, length ∼1 m), it will be accelerated from 50 to ∼75 MeV by interacting with a 0.8 TW Gaussian-mode circularly polarized optical pulse provided by the ATF CO2 10.6μm laser system. The LACARA laser transport optics must handle 10 J and be capable of forming a Gaussian beam inside the solenoid with a 1.4 mm waist and a Rayleigh range of 60 cm. The electron optics must transport a bunch having input emittance of 0.015 mm-mrad and 100 μm waist through the magnet. Precision alignment between the electron beam and the solenoid magnetic axis is required, and a method to achieve this is described in detail. Emittance- filtering may be necessary to yield an accelerated bunch having a narrow (∼1%) energy-spread. © 2006 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]