Cyclotron Maser Cooling towards Coherent Particle Beams

Abstract

This article presents a new particle beam cooling scheme, namely cyclotron maser cooling (CMC). Relativistic gyrating particles, forced by a solenoidal magnetic field over some length of their trajectory, move in a helical path and undergo emission or absorption of radiations stimulated by a resonance RF field. Theoretical and experimental investigations on electron beams indicate that when the action of the RF field exceeds a critical value the beam jumps abruptly to a coherent radiative system undergoing CMC in which most electrons are accumulated to a discrete energy with the same gyration phase. The mechanism of CMC was proved to be an elementary cooling process that is common to dissipative systems consisting of a driving field and oscillators with a stable energy. It leads to the generation of a coherent beam of particles that provides means to control miscellaneous particle induced reactions. For example, CMC electrons would generate coherent X-ray and gamma-ray photons through coherent inverse Compton scattering of laser radiation.