Analysis of saturation phenomena in Cerenkov free-electron lasers with a planar waveguide

In this paper, the operation of the stimulated emission in Cerenkov free-electron laser (CFEL) is studied on the basis of the modulations of electron velocity and density by the electromagnetic (EM) field. The influence of the electron relaxation, due to mutual electrons collisions, on the electron dynamics is taken into account. We investigate the growth characteristics of Cerenkov laser operating in the small-signal and saturation regimes. In the saturation regime, the effect of velocity reduction of the electron beam on the gain dynamics is demonstrated. We also show that our results match with those of other well-known treatments in the small-signal gain limit. © 2011 American Institute of Physics