Abstract

Degradations in the performance of a free-electron laser resonator due to such perturbations as (1) mirror tilts or decentrations and (2) alignment errors between the thin pencil beam of relativistic electrons, constituting the gain, and the resonator optical axis are examined. The laser performance is assessed by obtaining computationally the numerical iterative resonator solutions of the loaded cavity in the presence of these misalignments. Rigorous numerical propagations of nonaxisymmetric radiation fields¹ that are fully coupled to a 3-D formulation of a tapered-wiggler free-electron laser amplifier² are used with appropriate insertions of aperture and mirror stations to represent the loaded cavity.

© 1983 Optical Society of America