Transition Radiation in a Periodically Stratified Plasma

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Abstract
The solution to the problem of determining the transition radiation emitted when a charged particle moves uniformly in a periodically stratified cold, isotropic plasma is obtained. The electromagnetic field may be expressed in terms of an infinite number of normal modes. The conditions under which some of these modes are radiative are discussed, and expressions for the field components and the energy spectral density are obtained. It is found that radiation may be emitted for arbitrarily small particle velocities and that the strongest emission takes place in a frequency band just above the average plasma frequency. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the behavior of the spectra of the various radiative modes as the frequency and plasma parameters are varied.