CHARACTERISTICS OF SYNCHROTRON CERENKOV RADIATION

A diagrammatic technique has been worked out in the framework of noneq uilibrium statistical mechanics as developed by Prigogine and co-worke rs to tackle the problem of radiation emission from a relativistic ele ctron in an ambient plasma embedding an axial-wiggler magnetic field. The theory is exact in that the diagrams contributing towards the self -consistent-field approximation have been summed up exactly and one ob tains a time-dependent response function. The kinetic regime has been obtained by eliminating the memory by taking an asymptotic limit in ti me. Explicit calculations have been affected to obtain functions like the Cerenkov angle and the refractive index as well as the power emitt ed by the system. It has been shown that the radiation emitted has ver y peculiar polarization features.