High Energy Gain IFEL at UCLA Neptune Laboratory

We report on the observation of energy gain in excess of 20 MeV at the Inverse Free Electron Laser Accelerator experiment at the Neptune Laboratory at UCLA. A 14.5 MeV electron beam is injected in a 50 cm long undulator strongly tapered both in period and field amplitude. A CO 2 10.6 µ m laser with power > 400 GW is used as the IFEL driver. The Rayleigh range of the laser (∼ 1.8 cm) is shorter than the undulator length so that the interaction is diffraction dominated. Few per cent of the injected particles are trapped in stable accelerating buckets and electrons with energies up to 35 MeV are detected on the magnetic spectrometer. Three dimensional simulations are in good agreement with the electron energy spectrums observed in the experiment and indicate that substantial energy exchange between laser and electron beam only occurs in the first 25-30 cm of the undulator. An energy gradient of > 70 MeV is inferred. In the second section of the undulator higher harmonic IFEL interaction is observed.