RADIABEAM TECHNOLOGIES, LLC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: Existing pulsed terahertz sources are rather expensive, bulky and frail for commercializat

Description

Existing pulsed terahertz sources are rather expensive, bulky and frail for commercialization. Powerful THz radiation sources typically use 10 MeV or higher energy accelerators. Undulator- based Free Electron Lasers require significant real estate and are complex to operate. The lack of availability of a powerful, small foot-print terahertz source severely limits the rapidly growing research and commercial applications of terahertz. In this project we will develop a compact and much less expensive coherent terahertz source with high peak and substantial average power. It allows generation of high peak (up to ~MW range) and substantial average THz radiation power due to microbunching provided by the beam compression in an alpha-magnet, beam pre-bunching in the RF gun, and resonant Cherenkov radiation in a robust, ~inch-long planar, sub-mm gap formed by copper plates with gratings or a thin CVD diamond coating. The THz radiation in the source can be accompanied by synchronized, intense, ps-sub-ps bursts of low-dose hard X-ray radiation for additional capabilities. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits: The enormously wide range of commercial applications includes container inspection, screening, non-destructive testing, safe imaging, remote sensing, surface defectoscopy, cancer diagnostics, and time-domain spectroscopy. A rapidly growing number of research applications are found in solid-state, nuclear physics, medicine, and biology. The same source can additionally generate intense ultrashort bursts of low-dose hard X-ray radiation to enhance screening capability.