A Cerenkov source of high-power picosecond pulsed microwaves

One or more electron bunches passing along the axis of a dielectric-lined cylindrical waveguide are shown to emit picosecond pulses of high-power broad-band microwave radiation. The bunches can be generated by an S-band RF gun, and thus spaced from one another by 10.5 cm in a macropulse sequence, or a single more intense bunch can be generated using a laser-illuminated photocathode in the RF gun. Theory is developed for the excitation of TM_0m modes of this waveguide which propagate at the bunch velocity from Cerenkov radiation emitted by a single intense bunch. A train of picosecond coherent wakefield pulses is shown to follow the bunch, when the waveguide modes have nearly constant spacing in frequency. An example is shown for an alumina-lined waveguide with 10-nC 3-15-ps bunches having an initial energy of 6 MeV. Computations are presented of the mode spectrum of the radiation and its time structure. It is also shown that measurements of the mode spectrum, or of the energy loss of the bunch, can be used to infer the axial density profile of the bunch. Certain features of the theory are compared with the results of a preliminary experiment