Lasers techniques: Improvement of classical accelerators by lasers. Laser accelerators with and without plasmas. Lasers accelerators in vacuum

Of the unconventional accelerator techniques those including lasers are reported. After explaining the advances by lasers for classical accelerator techniques, as FELs and other methods for 100 GHz generation of GW pulses, a survey is given of far field and near field laser acceleration. Problems of the beat-wave accelerator are discussed and schemes for particle interaction in vacuum without plasma are elaborated. One scheme is the Boreham experiment and another is the acceleration of "standing" wave fields where charged particles are trapped in the intensity minima. Another scheme uses the relativistic acceleration by half waves where the now available petawatt-picosecond laser pulses should produce GeV electron pulses of high luminosity. Increase of these electron enrgies would need very large lasers in the future.