Feasibility of optical diffraction radiation for a non-invasive low-emittance beam diagnostics

A "proof-of-principle" experiment on the optical diffraction radiation (ODR) as a single-pulse beam profile monitor is planned using an electron beam extracted from the KEK-ATF damping ring. The main goals of this experiment are the following: (i) To measure the yield and the angular distributions of the optical diffraction radiation from a large-size target at different wavelengths, impact parameters and beam characteristics for a comparison with analogous characteristics of optical transition radiation from a foil with identical optical parameters and for a verification of the model assumption (perfectly conducting semi-infinite target). (ii) To investigate the ODR angular distributions from a tilted target with a slit for observing the interference effects. (iii) To compare the results obtained by simulations based on classical approaches, taking into account the optical characteristics of the equipment and the beam parameters. (iv) To estimate the prospects of using ODR as a new non-invasive tool for ultrarelativistic beams. We estimated that the ODR photon yield in 10% bandwidth for 500 nm is about 10⁶ photons/bunch with an impact parameter of 100 μm. This indicates that the ODR monitor is a promising candidate for single-pulse beam-profile measurements, and that it will be an extremely useful instrument for future linear colliders (JLC, NLC, TESLA and CLIC).