Phase-stable, microwave FEL amplifier

Free-electron laser (FEL) amplifiers have demonstrated high efficiency and high output power for microwave wavelengths. However, using present technology, microwave FEL amplifiers are not phase stable enough to be suitable for driving linear accelerators, where several such amplifiers need to be phase locked. The growing wave´s phase sensitivity to the beam voltage in the small-signal regime is responsible for the largest contribution to this phase instability. We discuss a scheme that reduces the phase sensitivity to the beam voltage by operating off synchronism and matching the phase variation resulting from the desynchronism to the phase variation from the reduced plasma wavenumber as the beam voltage changes