Coherent optical transition radiation imaging for compact accelerator electron-beam diagnostics

Application of coherent optical transition radiation (COTR) diagnostics to compact accelerators has been demonstrated for the laser-driven plasma accelerator case recently. It is proposed that such diagnostics for beam size, beam divergence, microbunching fraction, spectral content, and bunch length would be useful before and after any subsequent acceleration in crystals or nanostructures. In addition, there are indications that under some scenarios a microbunched beam could resonantly excite wake fields in nanostructures that might lead to an increased acceleration gradient.