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Free electron laser in the magnetically dominated regime: simulations with the ONEDFEL code

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

Maxim Lyutikov Open the ORCID record for Maxim Lyutikov [Opens in a new window]  and
Henry Freund
Maxim Lyutikov*
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University, 525 Northwestern Avenue, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2036, USA
Henry Freund
Affiliation:
Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: lyutikov@purdue.edu
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Abstract

Using the ONEDFEL code we perform free electron laser simulations in the astrophysically important guide-field dominated regime. For wigglers’ (Alfvén waves) wavelengths of tens of kilometres and beam Lorentz factor ${\sim }10^3$, the resulting coherently emitted waves are in the centimetre range. Our simulations show a growth of the wave intensity over fourteen orders of magnitude, over the astrophysically relevant scale of approximately a few kilometres. The signal grows from noise (unseeded). The resulting spectrum shows fine spectral substructures, reminiscent of those observed in fast radio bursts.

Keywords

astrophysical plasmas
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Plasma Physics , Volume 91 , Issue 1 , February 2025 , E10
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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