Free electron broad-band THz radiator

In this paper, a comparison between the conventional Tera-Hertz (THz) sources and a THz radiator based on free electron devices is proposed. The basic idea of the exploitation of some of the features of the RF FELs will be presented together with some examples that could represent an appealing source to start with. A discussion about the link between the spectrum of the emitted radiation and the electron bunch length is presented. The necessity of generating very short bunch of electrons to be injected in the radiator is demonstrated.