Progress on STELLA experiment

Progress is reported on the Staged Electron Laser Acceleration (STELLA) experiment, which has been assembled on the BNL Accelerator Test Facility (ATF). The primary goal of STELLA is to demonstrate staging of the laser acceleration process by using the BNL inverse free electron laser (IFEL) as a prebuncher, which generates /spl sim/1-/spl mu/m long microbunches, and accelerating these microbunches using an inverse Cerenkov acceleration (ICA) stage. Experimental runs are underway to recommission the IFEL and ICA systems separately, and reestablish the microbunching process. Staging will then be examined by running both the IFEL and ICA systems together.