<title>Generation of an intense directed ultrashort electromagnetic pulse</title>

Abstract

For generation of high power supershort directed electromagnetic pulse it is proposed to use faster-than-light electron current that is produced by the obliquely incident ionizing radiation illuminating plane metallic surface. The characteristic property of such source is the equality of the ionizing radiation incidence angle to the electromagnetic pulse emission angle. This fact allows to use the ordinary focusing optics methods for directed pulse generation. In the case of space-charge limited current the dominant wavelength of the electromagnetic pulse decreases with the intensity raise of ionizing radiation that leads to decrease of the electromagnetic radiation angular spread. For sufficiently high ionizing radiation intensity generation of directed, slowly spreading, beamlike electromagnetic pulse may be possible. By applying this principle of generation the limitation on accumulated energy area that is common to traditional technologies can be removed. Accordingly the power of microwave device may be increased by ten up to thousand times in comparison with existing sources, the duration of electromagnetic pulse may be reduced to tens nanoseconds or less and the spread of EMR beams may be realized less then 10-2. The increasing of produced radiation can be obtained by simple increasing emitted surface. In relation to this fact large-scale device with large radiated energy may be based on small 'elementary' sources just as house built from bricks. A compact form a small weight are the characteristic properties of microwave device with superlight electron current.© (1995) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.