A diode-pumped laser system for the photo-injector of an accelerator

In this paper, we present the design of a laser system for the CTF3 test facility for the Compact Linear Collider at CERN. The accelerator requires high repeatability of the charge per electron bunch, meaning that the energy stability of the laser system must be better than 0.25%. The laser will produce 1.5 /spl mu/s flat- top pulse trains of /spl sim/2300 micro-pulses, with 15 kW average power in the pulse train at the fundamental wavelength of 1047 nm. This will he achieved by amplifying a CW pulse train in a pulsed diode-pumped Nd:YLF amplifier. Our amplifier is designed to run in steady-state, in a configuration producing flat-top pulses with energy stability better than 1% which will then be feedback stabilised.