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Since in a Doppler shift dominated cyclotron maser, the Doppler term is the main contribution to the output frequency, the electron-beam momentum spread plays an important role in determing the gain and efficiency. It is demonstrated by computer simulations that the increase in beam momentum spread diminishes the gain slightly but reduces the efficiency significantly. The decrease in conversion efficiency arises mainly from the dispersion of the wave reducing the available free energy from the electron beam. Further increase in momentum spread eventually changes the saturation mechanism from phase trapping to energy depletion.
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A. T. Lin (1984) studied this question.
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