Spectrum Phase and Constraints on THz-Optical klystron

TL;DR

This paper investigates how microbunching effects influence the spectral phase and amplitude of THz optical klystrons, revealing fundamental constraints on their spectral purity and stability at low energies.

Contribution

It introduces a phase-space formalism to analyze microbunching impacts on spectral phase and establishes a link between collective effects and spectral distortions in THz optical klystrons.

Findings

Microbunching causes spectral broadening and phase jitter.

Overlap of collective-effect wavelengths with radiation wavelength leads to phase distortion.

Constraints on harmonic bunching and spectral stability are identified.

Abstract

Optical klystrons provide an efficient mechanism for enhancing coherent radiation through laser-induced microbunching and dispersive amplification. In the terahertz (THz) regime and at low beam energy, however, the radiation wavelength becomes comparable to the characteristic wavelengths of longitudinal space-charge (LSC) and coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) driven microbunching. In this work, we analyze the impact of electron-beam microbunching on the spectral amplitude and phase of a seeded optical klystron operating in the THz regime. Using a phase-space formalism, incoherent energy modulations generated by collective effects are shown to enter the bunching spectrum as a stochastic longitudinal phase, producing local wavenumber jitter and spectral broadening. An explicit connection between the microbunching-induced energy modulation and LSC/CSR gain is established for low-energy beams, demonstrating that the overlap between collective-effect wavelengths and the optical-klystron radiation wavelength leads to strong spectral phase distortion. These effects impose fundamental constraints on the achievable harmonic bunching and spectral purity and stability of THz optical klystrons and must be considered in the design and optimization of next-generation low-energy THz FEL facilities.