A beam-maser instability: Direct amplification of radiation

The cyclotron maser instability has been applied in the past to laboratory microwave generation devices, and radiation from planetary magnetospheres, such as Earth’s kilometric radiation and Jovian decametric radiation. Recently, the same concept was put forth to explain solar coronal radio bursts. In particular, it was suggested that the ordinary (O) mode propagating in antiparallel direction with respect to the electron beam may be important. For this reason, this article revisits the maser instability theory with a particular emphasis on understanding the key difference between forward- and backward-propagating O-mode masers. It is found that the O-mode maser instability is excited over a significant range of wave phase angle which corresponds to the backward propagation. Of the various physical parameters the average beam speed and the ratio of plasma-to-gyro-frequencies, ωp/Ω, play important roles. Past discussions have emphasized the role of ωp/Ω. The present analysis also includes the effects of average beam speed on the instability. It is shown that there is a critical beam speed for the instability onset, beyond which the growth rate is quasi-independent of the beam speed. Such a finding has not been reported in the literature before.