TM mode radiation guiding in an REB-induced plasma duct

Abstract

An intense relativistic electron beam propagating through a plasma creates a low-density plasma duct capable of guiding a free-electron laser mode. The beam dynamics plays an important role in the propagation of TM modes. For (where and are the beam and plasma densities respectively, and a and b are the x and y dimensions of the duct) and beam energy of about 2 MeV, the threshold current turns out to be about 20 kA. For marginal radiation guiding, the size of the plasma duct decreases with beam voltage. Application of a strong DC magnetic field shows that an even narrower duct can guide high-frequency radiation.