An efficient Cherenkov oscillator with an independent injection channel for generating phase-controlled super-radiance pulses

Abstract

An efficient Cherenkov oscillator with gigawatt phase-controlled super-radiance (SR) pulses is studied for the application of coherent summation systems. To obtain phase-controlled SR pulses, an ultra-short seed pulse is required to be injected into the interaction space from the direction of the collector, which substitutes the impact of the spontaneous emission from the front edge of the electron beam. It means that, for a conventional Cherenkov oscillator, the injection seed pulse and output gigawatt SR pulse need to share the same channel. Therefore, an additional quasi-optical reflection system is needed to separate these two signals. To optimize such a scheme, we introduce a front extractor near the reflector and an injection channel at the side of the collector, allowing the output and injection channels to be independent of each other. Particle-in-cell simulations reveal that as the diode voltage is 260 kV, the beam current is 3.5 kA, and the magnetic field is 0.42 T, a short SR pulse with peak power of 1.93 GW is obtained. The corresponding conversion factor (ratio of average output power and input DC power) is up to 2.12. When the seed pulse has a rise time of 0.3 ns and a width of 0.2 ns injection, the phase of the seed pulse and the initiated SR pulse are closely correlated with the accuracy of 0.17 rad as the power ratio is down to −25 dB. The advantages of high efficiency and phase control make the oscillator a promising device used for the miniaturization and practicability of coherent summation systems.