Chaotic electron trajectories in an electromagnetic wiggler free-electron laser with ion-channel guiding

Chaotic behavior of an electron motion in combined backward propagating electromagnetic wiggler and ion-channel electrostatic fields is studied. The Poincare surface-of-sections are employed to investigate chaotic behavior of electron motion. It is shown that the electron motion can exhibit chaotic behavior when the ion-channel density is low or medium, while for sufficiently high ion-channel density, the electron motion becomes regular (nonchaotic). Also, the chaotic trajectories decrease when the effects of self-fields of electron beam are taken into account and under Budker condition all trajectories become regular. The above result is in contrast with magnetostatic helical wiggler with axial magnetic field in which chaotic motion is produced by self-fields of electron beam. The chaotic and nonchaotic electron trajectories are confirmed by calculating Liapunov exponents. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3483122]