Spontaneous and Stimulated Interaction of Free Electrons with Light

Recent progress in the field of Free Electron Lasers FEL led to demonstration of an X Ray laser many orders of magnitudes brighter than any other source of X Ray radiation 1 and is expected to lead to exciting new applications 2 There is substantial interest in compactization of this technology including development of laser accelerators 3 and compact free electron radiation sources After a short review of the field I will present the fun