Extrapolation of the FOM 1 MW free-electron maser to a multi-megawatt millimeter microwave source

A Free-Electron Maser is now under test at the FOM Institute (Rijnhuizen, Netherlands) with the goal of producing 1 MW long pulse to CW microwave output in the range 130–250 GHz with wall plug efficiencies of 60%. An extrapolated version of this device is proposed, which by scaling up beam current and voltage, would produce microwave power levels of up to 5 MW CW, thus reducing the cost per kilowatt and increasing the power per module. This would allow for practical applications in such diverse areas such as space power beaming, heating of fusion plasmas and heating of high Mach number wind tunnels.