Narrowband Emission in Thomson Sources Operating in the High-Field Regime

We present a novel and quite general analysis of the interaction of a high-field chirped laser pulse and a relativistic electron, in which exquisite control of the spectral brilliance of the upshifted Thomson-scattered photon is shown to be possible. Normally, when Thomson scattering occurs at high field strengths, there is ponderomotive line broadening in the scattered radiation. This effect makes the bandwidth too large for some applications and reduces the spectral brilliance. We show that such broadening can be corrected and eliminated by suitable frequency modulation of the incident laser pulse. Further, we suggest a practical realization of this compensation idea in terms of a chirped-beam driven free electron laser oscillator configuration and show that significant compensation can occur, even with the imperfect matching to be expected in these conditions.