Modeling of terahertz radiation emission from a free-electron laser

In this article, we report the generation of terahertz (THz) radiation using the interaction of a laser-modulated relativistic electron beam (REB) with a surface plasma wave. Two laser beams propagating through the modulator interact with the REB, leading to velocity modulation of the beam. This results in pre-bunching of the REB. The pre-bunched beam travels through the drift space, where the velocity modulation translates into density modulation. The density-modulated beam, on interacting with the surface plasma pump wave, acquires an oscillatory velocity that couples with the modulated beam density to give rise to a nonlinear current density which acts as an antenna to give THz radiation. By optimizing the parameters of the beam and the wiggler, we obtain power of the order of 10(-4) using the current scheme.