Efficiency enhancement of free electron Maser oscillator by mode selection with a prebunched electron beam

We present a method for enhancing the efficiency of a Free Electron Laser Maser oscillator by locking it to a preferred resonator mode. This is done by prebunching of the e beam before injection into the wiggler. In a free running oscillator, the longitudinal mode that dominates the mode competition process during the oscillation buildup period is usually the highest gain mode. However, this mode does not extract the highest energy from the e beam. Lower eigenfrequency modes would provide a higher efficiency if they could dominate the mode competition process. By prebunching the e beam at a frequency near any one of the longitudinal eigenfrequencies of the resonator ~having a gain.1!, we can make that mode dominant at saturation. The eigenfrequency for which the maximum efficiency is obtained is the lowest eigenfrequency of the resonator for which the net small signal gain is greater than 1. Employing an experimental setup of a prebunched beam Free Electron Maser, we demonstrated efficiency enhancement of 30% for this lowest eigenfrequency mode ~as compared to the highest gain mode!. Simulation results predict an efficiency enhancement of up to 50%. © 2000 American Institute of Physics. @S0003-6951~00!04001-8#