Cherenkov Diffraction Radiation as a tool for beam diagnostics

During the last three years, the emission of Cherenkov Diffraction Radiation (ChDR), appearing when a relativistic charged particle moves in the vicinity of a dielectric medium, has been investigated with the aim of providing non-invasive beam diagnostics. ChDR has very interesting properties, with a large number of photons emitted in a narrow and well-defined solid angle, providing excellent conditions for detection with very little background. This contribution will present a collection of recent beam measurements performed at several facilities such as the Cornell Electron Storage Ring, the Advanced Test Facility 2 at KEK, the Diamond light source in the UK and the CLEAR test facility at CERN. Those results, complemented with simulations, suggest that the use of both incoherent and coherent emission of Cherenkov diffraction radiation could open up new beam instrumentation possibilities for relativistic charged particle beams.