NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Bruce M. Alberts is president of the National Academy of Sciences.
The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Robert M. White is president of the National Academy of Engineering.
The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Kenneth I. Shine is president of the Institute of Medicine.
The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Bruce M. Alberts and Dr. Robert M. White are chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council.
Support for this project was provided by the Department of Energy under contract no. DE-FG05-89ER14032 and the Department of the Navy under contract no. ONR-N00014-89-J-1728.
Copyright 1994 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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COMMITTEE ON FREE ELECTRON LASERS AND OTHER ADVANCED COHERENT LIGHT SOURCES
DONALD H. LEVY,
University of Chicago,
Chair
C. DENISE CALDWELL,
University of Central Florida
STEVEN CHU,
Stanford University
WILLIAM B. COLSON,
Naval Postgraduate School
F. FLEMING CRIM,
University of Wisconsin at Madison
JOHN M. DAWSON,
University of California at Los Angeles
THOMAS DEUTSCH,
Massachusetts General Hospital
PAUL A. FLEURY,
AT&T Bell Laboratories
FRANZ HIMPSEL,
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
PAUL L. HOUSTON,
Cornell University
GERALDINE L. RICHMOND,
University of Oregon
JAMES B. ROBERTO,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
TAMAE MAEDA WONG, Study Director
KASANDRA GOWEN, Project Assistant
DOUGLAS J. RABER, Director,
Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology
DONALD C. SHAPERO, Director,
Board on Physics and Astronomy
RONALD D. TAYLOR, Senior Program Officer,
Board on Physics and Astronomy
BOARD ON CHEMICAL SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY
PETER DERVAN,
California Institute of Technology,
Co-chair
EDWIN PRZYBYLOWICZ,
Rochester Institute of Technology,
Co-chair
PAUL S. ANDERSON,
The Du Pont Merck Pharmaceutical Company
ALEXIS BELL,
University of California at Berkeley
DAVID C. BONNER,
Premix, Inc.
PHILIP H. BRODSKY,
Monsanto Company
GREGORY R. CHOPPIN,
Florida State University
FRED P. CORSON,
Dow Chemical Company
MICHAEL P. DOYLE,
Trinity University
BERTRAM O. FRASER-REID,
Duke University
JOSEPH G. GORDON II,
IBM Almaden Research Center
L. LOUIS HEGEDUS,
W.R. Grace & Co.
KENDALL HOUK,
University of California at Los Angeles
DOUGLAS A. LAUFFENBERGER,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
MARSHA I. LESTER,
University of Pennsylvania
W. CARL LINEBERGER,
University of Colorado
ROYCE W. MURRAY,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
JEANNE E. PEMBERTON,
University of Arizona
W. HARMON RAY,
University of Wisconsin at Madison
JOANNE STUBBE,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
DOUGLAS J. RABER, Director
SCOTT WEIDMAN, Senior Program Officer
TAMAE MAEDA WONG, Program Officer
SYBIL A. PAIGE, Administrative Associate
MARIA P. JONES, Senior Project Assistant
KASANDRA GOWEN, Project Assistant
TANA SPENCER, Project Assistant
BOARD ON PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY
DAVID N. SCHRAMM,
University of Chicago,
Chair
LLOYD ARMSTRONG,JR.,
University of Southern California
DAVID H. AUSTON,
Columbia University
DAVID E. BALDWIN,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
WILLIAM F. BRINKMAN,
AT&T Bell Laboratories
PRAVEEN CHAUDHARI,
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
FRANK DRAKE,
University of California at Santa Cruz
ROBERT C. DYNES,
University of California at San Diego
HANS FRAUENFELDER,
Los Alamos National Laboratory
JEROME I. FRIEDMAN,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MARTHA P. HAYNES,
Cornell University
GILLIAN KNAPP,
Princeton University
ALBERT NARATH,
Sandia National Laboratories
GEORGE W. PARSHALL,
E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. Inc. (retired)
JOSEPH M. PROUD,
GTE Corporation (retired)
JOHANNA STACHEL,
State University of New York at Stony Brook
DAVID WILKINSON,
Princeton University
SIDNEY WOLFF,
National Optical Astronomy Observatories
DONALD C. SHAPERO, Director
ROBERT L. RIEMER, Associate Director
RONALD D. TAYLOR, Senior Program Officer
TIMOTHY M. SNEAD, Administrative Associate
SUZANNE BOWEN, Senior Project Assistant
COMMISSION ON PHYSICAL SCIENCES, MATHEMATICS, AND APPLICATIONS
RICHARD N. ZARE,
Stanford University,
Chair
RICHARD S. NICHOLSON,
American Association for the Advancement of Science,
Vice Chair
STEPHEN L. ADLER,
Institute for Advanced Study
JOHN A. ARMSTRONG,
IBM Corporation (retired)
SYLVIA T. CEYER,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
AVNER FRIEDMAN,
University of Minnesota
SUSAN L. GRAHAM,
University of California at Berkeley
ROBERT J. HERMANN,
United Technologies Corporation
HANS MARK,
University of Texas at Austin
CLAIRE E. MAX,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
CHRISTOPHER F. McKEE,
University of California at Berkeley
JAMES W. MITCHELL,
AT&T Bell Laboratories
JEROME SACKS,
National Institute of Statistical Sciences
A. RICHARD SEEBASS III,
University of Colorado
LEON T. SILVER,
California Institute of Technology
CHARLES P. SLICHTER,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ALVIN W. TRIVELPIECE,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
NORMAN METZGER, Executive Director
PREFACE
The Committee on Free Electron Lasers and Other Advanced Coherent Light Sources was organized by the Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology and the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Research Council (NRC) and supported by the Department of Energy and by the Office of Naval Research. The committee was asked to study the scientific opportunities presented by free electron lasers and other advanced coherent light sources.
There have been new proposals for the construction of advanced light sources in all spectral regions from the far infrared to the x-ray. Part of the motivation for proposing these sources is their potential for scientific research, and the committee's study was aimed at evaluating that potential relative to other photon sources. One way of approaching the charge was to answer two questions: (1) What are the most important scientific problems whose solutions require photons? (2) What mix of photon sources (e.g., free electron lasers, laboratory lasers, synchrotrons, and others) will be best for solving these problems?
The committee's charge was to study potential applications of these photon sources to scientific research only. There are many other reasons for building free electron lasers. For example, they represent new technologies that deserve support in their own right, manufacturing applications such as materials processing might use lasers, and there might be applications in diagnostic and therapeutic medicine. While these other reasons may be important, they were outside the committee' s charge and were not examined.
The committee held four meetings preceded by a preliminary planning session. The planning session was held in October 1993 and was attended by the chairman, the NRC staff, and several scientists with various kinds of expertise. The purpose of this session was to define the committee's work and determine the methodology to be used.
The first meeting, in December 1993, was organized mainly as a workshop whose purpose was to assess the current and future state of free electron laser development. Several questions were asked at this workshop. What do free electron lasers and other sources do now? What are they likely to do in the future? What are they likely to cost? Speakers, panel members, and participants (see Appendix A) had a broad range of expertise in the development of free electron lasers and other advanced light sources such as synchrotrons, plasma lasers, and laboratory lasers. The committee also heard talks about free electron laser facilities in other countries.
The second meeting, held in March 1994, was also partly a workshop at which the applications of various photon sources in scientific research were examined. We invited speakers to present what they thought were the most compelling scientific problems in their area that required sophisticated photon sources and to describe the
role that free electron lasers might play in the solution of these problems. The criteria used in the choice of speakers were that they be experts with a broad understanding of the most important work in a given field and that they be recognized by other workers in the field as having this expertise.
To obtain additional information, the committee produced a list of scientists who had themselves expressed interest in free electron lasers, who were thought by others to have an interest in free electron lasers, or who were working in areas where free electron lasers were thought to be important. Between the March and April meetings, committee members called these scientists to ask for information similar to that provided by the speakers at the March workshop. The committee also sent letters to a number of experts in free electron laser development, asking them to identify other scientists likely to do important research with free electron lasers, and to obtain from these scientists a short description of their proposed use of free electron lasers and their comments on why this was the photon source of choice. All participants in the December workshop, as well as others, received this letter. The committee examined all of the descriptions received as a result of this letter and in some cases placed a follow-up call to obtain more information.
As a result of its inquiries, the committee asked four additional scientists to give presentations at its third meeting in April 1994. These presentations involved technical aspects of development as well as scientific applications. The rest of the third meeting was devoted to developing the substance of this report. We had discussions about the format and outline of the report, the conclusions we had reached, and the recommendations we would make. These discussions quickly led to a consensus report that the committee subscribes to unanimously. Individual committee members wrote drafts of sections of the report, sub-committees responsible for individual chapters criticized the drafts, and revised drafts were sent to the entire committee prior to our last meeting in May 1994. At the May meeting, further discussions of the drafts and revisions were completed.
The committee is grateful to Erik Johnson of Brookhaven National Laboratory for providing figures and material that appear in the report and for spending the extensive time and energy needed to collect the data and document the figures. We would also like to acknowledge the help and support of the study director, Tamae Maeda Wong, who facilitated every aspect of the work.
Donald H. Levy, Chair
Committee on Free Electron Lasers and Other Advanced Coherent Light Sources