Working Group VI Summary Report: New Ideas Employing High-Power Lasers

The objectives of this working group were to provide the ''Future Light Source Community'' information on: Electron-Laser interaction based sources; Plasma based radiation sources and accelerators; and Present and future high-power laser technology. A summary of presentations, discussions and opinions is presented next. At the end of this report, a few references are given. The list is very far from being complete but is meant as a start for further exploring the various topics discussed in this working group. Based on presentations and discussions during the workshop, a summarizing table of the performance of three different types of laser systems has been made. The emphasis is on listing performance parameters of solid state, FEL and gas based lasers, relevant to the development of a future fourth generation light source. Two types of solid state lasers capable of producing peak power in the multi-terawatt range are described: Nd:glass and Ti:sapphire lasers [1]. The main development for these lasers is towards higher average power levels: from the 10 W to the > 100 W level. An infrared FEL has recently produced 1 kW average power but with peak power on the order of 0.1 GW [2]. A terawatt class, short pulse CO{sub 2} based gas laser is under development at the Advanced Test Facility at BNL [3]