Beam dynamics in Compton ring gamma sources

Electron storage rings of GeV energy with laser pulse stacking cavities are promising intense sources of polarized hard photons which, via pair production, can be used to generate polarized positron beams. In this paper, the dynamics of electron bunches circulating in a storage ring and interacting with high-power laser pulses is studied both analytically and by simulation. Both the common features and the differences in the behavior of bunches interacting with an extremely high power laser pulse and with a moderate pulse are discussed. Also considerations on particular lattice designs for Compton gamma rings are presented.