Adiabatic beam buncher for plasma accelerators

An adiabatic free-electron laser wiggler for electron beam bunching is described. A free-electron laser naturally bunches an electron beam. When the beam is trapped adiabatically, the emittance of the bunched beam is decreased significantly compared with abrupt trapping. For a 57-period two-meter buncher having poleface magnetic field of 2 T and 10 GW of 100 /spl mu/m radiation, adiabatic trapping reduces the final emittance by a factor of three.