Staging of two laser-driven, relativistic electron accelerators has been demonstrated for the first time in a proof-of-principle experiment, whereby two distinct and serial laser accelerators acted on an electron beam in a coherently cumulative manner. Output from a CO2 laser was split into two beams to drive two inverse free electron lasers (IFEL) separated by 2.3 m. The first IFEL served to bunch the electrons into approximately 3 fs microbunches, which were rephased with the laser wave in the second IFEL. This represents a crucial step towards the development of practical laser-driven electron accelerators.

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A method for spanning the 100−1000−μ portion of the spectrum with continuously tunable coherent radiation is described. The approach is based upon laser light scattering from the long−wavelength side of the A1−symmetry soft mode in LiNbO3. In contrast with other techniques, this method uses a single fixed−frequency pump source, requires no magnetic field, provides continuous rather than discrete tuning, can cover most of the 100−1000−μ range, operates at room temperature, and is simple to tune. The experimental data show that tuning was obtained from approximately 150 to 700 μ.