No. 56 (2011): High Power Laser Technology for Accelerators

Issue Editors: W. Leemans, W. Chou and M. Uesaka, Editor-in-Chief: W. Chou

This newsletter is a special joint edition by two ICFA panels – the Beam Dynamics Panel (chaired by Weiren Chou) and the Advanced and Novel Accelerators Panel (chaired by Mitsuru Uesaka). The newsletter theme is a White Paper from the ICFAICUIL Joint Task Force (chaired by Wim Leemans) entitled ―High power laser technology for accelerators. The use of lasers is a promising new technology for particle acceleration as an alternative to the traditional RF technology. Its main advantage is very high accelerating gradient (tens of GeV per meter, compared to tens of MeV per meter for RF). Laser-based acceleration can be applied to colliders, light sources and medical accelerators. Although there is still a long way to go to bring this technology from the laboratory to real accelerators, this White Paper produced by a formal collaboration between two scientific communities is an important milestone. It summarizes the discussions at two joint workshops organized by the ICFA-ICUIL Joint Task Force, one at GSI, Germany in 2010, and another at LBNL, USA in 2011.