The US Navy commissioned the National Research Council (NRC), which is a part of the National Academy of Sciences, to study the state of the art free-electron laser (FEL) technology for naval applications.
The NRC has now produced its report that anyone can read. While it is a report specifically target to its "customer", i.e. the US Navy, it is also valuable because it is one of the few (if not the only one) comprehensive study of the current capability of FELs, and the realistic advances that can be expected out of it. With several FEL facilities about to go online in the next few years (LCLS at SLAC for example), this report is a very good review of what FEL is and what it can do. It presents an excellent guide to the Dept. of Energy, for instance, with respect to these light source facilities using the FEL technology.
Note that this is another example of an accelerator physics application. And look Ma! No particle/high energy physics!
Zz.
check out
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jlab.org/FEL/
for the baby death ray
Thank you for the post, the report is surprisingly very well written. It's fairly easy to understand the applications of FEL from the report.
ReplyDeleteTake care, Lorne