Progress toward an integrated 100 TW laser-100 MeV electron linac experiment

Summary form only given. Advances in the chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) technique on solid state lasers have made it possible to achieve very high peak powers (>10 TW) at high repetition rates (>1 Hz). These high peak power ultrafast lasers systems are of great interest to laser-plasma interaction research and ultrafast X-ray generation. We are developing a Ti:sapphire based CPA laser system which is located near a high current 100 MeV RF linear accelerator. We are working to couple the laser to the accelerator in order to perform laser pulse interactions with a high current relativistic electron bunches. This requires that the laser be synchronized to the linear accelerator to a subpicosecond accuracy.