Variational Principle for Spontaneous Wiggler and Synchrotron Radiation

Within the framework of a Hilbert space theory, we develop a maximum-``power variational principle (MPVP) applicable to classical spontaneous electromagnetic radiation from relativistic electron beams or other prescribed classical current sources. A simple proof is summarized for the case of three-dimensional fields propagating in vacuum, and specialization to the important case of paraxial optics is also discussed. The techniques have been developed to model undulator radiation from relativistic electron beams, but are more broadly applicable to synchrotron or other radiation problems, and may generalize to certain structured media. We illustrate applications with a simple, mostly analytic example involving spontaneous undulator radiation (requiring a few additional approximations), as well as a mostly numerical example involving x-ray generation via high harmonic generation in sequenced undulators