Abstract

The efficiency of most popular approach to generating short wavelength radiation involving particle beams, FEL¹, is limited by the Thomson scattering cross section. If one were to use a beam of particles having a resonant scattering cross section for some frequency, a greatly enhanced gain might be expected. A natural candidate is a hydrogenic positive ion, having Z > 2, with a single bound electron. The fact that the ion is charged allows the beam to be accelerated to relativistic energies (γ≫ 1), therefore one can exploit the properties of relativistic kinematics which dictate that the back scattered radiation will have its wavelength shortened by a factor (2γ)².

© 1991 Optical Society of America