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In conventional radiation sources, narrowband radiation emission can be obtained by narrowband current oscillation. Usually the spectrum of the oscillating current is made narrow by a large or complicated structure for wave-particle interaction. One good example is the beam-undulator system. In this presentation, we introduce a new method to obtain a radiation emission with a well-collimated frequency without changing the broadband nature of a given current source. The method is based on our recent discovery of the new physical properties of the cut-off phenomenon, which broadly exists in general plasma-like media, such as plasma, waveguide, or photonic crystal, etc. A common feature of these media is the Bohm-Gross dispersion relation, which has a frequency condition to make the wavenumber zero. In the zero-wavenumber state, an electromagnetic wave cannot propagate through the medium, but instead, is reflected (i.e. cut-off). In regular steady-state analysis, the cut-off condition is characterized by infinite radiation impedance. An interesting question here is what would happen to the radiation power, if a non-zero current oscillating with the cut-off frequency were enforced in a medium (a current source, in contrast with the regular voltage source). A regular steady-state analysis for this situation leads to infinite power of radiation from Ohm’s law. We could solve such a paradoxical situation by analyzing the non-steady-state system; we found that the system can be described by a time-dependent Schroedinger equation with an external driving term. The solution of this equation shows a temporally growing electromagnetic field. When this concept is extended to a generally broadband current source, the spectral density at the cut-off frequency can be selectively enhanced (selectively enhanced emission, SEE). Hence a general broadband radiation source can be easily converted to a narrowband source by enclosing the system with a plasma-like medium. The current source seems to exist in many radiation systems with a low driver-to-emission efficiency. When the current is determined predominantly by the driver (for examples, laser pulses), while the feedback from the emitted field is weak, such current can be considered as a quasi-current source, We present a few examples (mostly from PIC simulations) to demonstrate the SEE; two-color-driven THz system enclosed by a tapered waveguide, THz emission from a magnetized plasma, and re-interpretation of experimental data. Those examples show that quasi-current source can be found in practical systems, and the SEE mechanism works.
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