Jefferson Lab in the News
FEL Gets First Beam Through Ultraviolet Beamline
The FEL ultraviolet beamline, with prominent red and green magnets, juts out to the right. On the left, the infrared beamline also extends nearly the length of the room.
The Free-Electron Laser at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility successfully transported an electron beam through its new ultraviolet beamline for the first time on Wednesday, October 28. The machine is now just months away from emitting its first powerful beams of ultraviolet laser light.
"This is a major milestone in the progress of the Jefferson Lab FEL," said George Neil, associate director of the FEL Division.
The Jefferson Lab FEL is already the most powerful tunable laser in the infrared and is also a powerful source of terahertz light. This new success caps a three-year effort to add ultraviolet capability to the FEL.
"After three years of assembly, installation and checkout, it took less than two hours to successfully send beam through the ultraviolet beamline," said Neil. "This sets the stage for lasing in the ultraviolet next spring after installation of the optical systems and wiggler chamber and diagnostics."
In the FEL, electrons are stripped from their atoms and whipped up to high energies by a linear accelerator. The electrons will then be sent into the ultraviolet beamline, where they will encounter the UV wiggler. A wiggler is a device that uses magnetic fields to shake the electrons, forcing them to release some of their energy in the form of photons. As in a conventional laser, the photons bounce between two mirrors in the optical system and are then emitted as a coherent beam of light.
Once the full upgrade is complete, the FEL will be capable of delivering ultraviolet laser light at a wavelength of 300 nanometers with kilowatts of power. Due to its tunability, the FEL will also be capable of providing watts of laser light at other ultraviolet wavelengths.
The Free-Electron Laser program is supported in part by the Department of Defense’s Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Joint Technology Office, the Department of Energy's Basic Energy Sciences, and the Commonwealth of Virginia. The upgrade was made possible with funding from the Air Force Research Laboratory.
The FEL transported its first electron beam through the ultraviolet beamline at 6:40 p.m. on Wednesday, October 28.
Contact: Kandice Carter, Jefferson Lab Public Affairs, 757-269-7263, kcarter@jlab.org
Jefferson Lab is managed and operated for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science by Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, a joint venture between Southeastern Universities Research Association, Inc. and CSC Applied Technologies Division, LLC.