Microwave Plasma Interaction in the Undulator Induced Transparency Regime and its Applications

Summary form only given. A two-dimensional numerical modeling of the plasma microwave interaction in the undulator induced transparency (UIT) regime is presented. UIT is a phenomenon originating from the coupling between the transverse and longitudinal electromagnetic waves (EM) in the magnetized plasma in the presence of the static helical magnetic undulator, which eliminates the absorption of an EM wave at the cyclotron frequency. A radical transfiguration of the plasma properties in the UIT regime results in slowing down the electromagnetic wave propagation and subsequent strong compression of the wave energy in the plasma. The UIT based pulse manipulation technique becomes very attractive due to the increasing demand for high power microwave sources, which requires the development of high power pulse compressors and power switching devices. Another signature of the UIT regime is that the phase velocity of the plasma wave is opposite to the phase and group velocity of the incident microwaves which opens up the possibility to design a plasma-based backward wave oscillators (BWO). The direct application of the UIT to the electron and ion acceleration is feasible due to the fact that the polarization of the compressed waves is primarily longitudinal and their phase velocity is controllable by the undulator period. The numerical simulation results we present examine the conception of the UIT based high power switching and plasma wave features for the realistic plasma and external magnetic field configuration in the slab and axisymmetric geometry