Use of Superradiance Pulses to Pump Multi-Pass Terahertz Compton Free Electron Lasers

Abstract

A scheme of a compact Compton terahertz free electron laser pumped by a high-power microwave superradiance pulse, which circulates in a quasi-optical cavity and undergoes multiple backscattering on a moderately relativistic counterpropagating electron beam with an energy of several MeV per electron has been proposed. Both periodic sequences of electron bunches formed by photoinjectors and microsecond electron beams from linear induction accelerators can be used as sources of electrons. The possibility of generating a sequence of multimegawatt coherent terahertz pulses with a sub-gigahertz repetition rate has been shown.