Stimulated emission of electron beam in nanotube bundles

Recently, a hypothetical nanoscale lasing device exploiting the emission of electromagnetic waves by electron beam in an isolated carbon nanotube (CNT) has been proposed [K.G. Batrakov, P.P. Kuzhir, S.A. Maksimenko, in: A. Lakhtakia, S.A. Maksimenko (Eds.), Proceedings of the SPIE, vol. 6328, 2006, p. 63280Z]. The present work considers the stimulated emission of an electron beam in CNT bundles. It is shown that the modification of electron wavefunction in CNT bundle as compared with isolated CNT can result in a significant change of the electron beam propagation in nanotubes. Two cases of the CNT collection arrangement—a “square” lattice and a densely packed bundle of CNTs—are discussed. The distribution of the electron density corresponding to four- and six-wave diffraction in the CNT collection is presented. The ranges where the electron scattering is suppressed are found to be preferable for lasing. The proposed way to increase the generation length extends substantially the potentiality of CNT bundle as a basic element of the nanoscale analog of the traveling wave tube (TWT), backward oscillator (BWO) and free-electron laser (FEL).