Resotron: A Novel Tunable Millimeter and Submillimeter Wave Source of Radiation

Abstract

The need for tunable radiation sources in the millimeter and submillimeter range for spectroscopic purposes is still a research area of great interest. The tunable radiation source, proposed in this paper, is a special free electron laser device with the prerequisite of low electron energy. The output power density in the millimeter (GHz)-range is of the order of MW/cm² and in the submillimeter (THz)-range of the order of kW/cm². The device consists of an electron source with electron optics, wiggler/microwiggler, and a longitudinal magnetic field. The wiggler for the THz-regime has a very short wiggler period of approximately 400 μm and could be manufactured with laser micromachining techniques. The free electron laser operates in magnetoresonance and shows surprisingly stable electron orbits and therefore narrow output frequencies. Computational results of the temporal behavior of the output power done with a multi-frequency code are reported.