Crystal undulator experiment at IHEP

Accelerator-based sources of hard-photon radiation are a rapidly developing field. Coherent radiation of a particle beam in an undulator is a popular choice. The crystalline undulators with periodically deformed crystallographic planes offer electromagnetic fields of the order of 1000 T and could provide a period L in the sub-millimeter range. In this way, a hundred-fold gain in the energy of emitted photons would be reached, as compared to a usual undulator. The first real construction of a crystal channeling undulator was recently proposed and realised by the present collaboration. After the sine-like deformation of crystal was proven in X-ray tests, four undulators were tested for channeling in a beam of 70-GeV protons. It was observed in the experiment that the crystal cross-section is efficiently channeling high energy particles, similarly to usual crystal deflectors. The experimentally established transparence for channeling of high energy particles allows one to start a direct experiment on photon production from a positron beam in the crystalline undulator. Details of commissioning of the experimental setup in the first run with 3 GeV positron beam are presented. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.