Anharmonic pulses due to transition radiation

The possibility of using the transition radiation of an electron bunch to generate nonstationary anharmonic pulses in free space and in a dispersive medium is demonstrated. It is shown that the transition radiation of the bunch gives rise to an infinite train of nonstationary anharmonic pulses described by solutions to the Klein-Gordon equation. The polarization of the resulting field at its leading edge appears to be different from the field polarization at the interface. The leading edge becomes steeper with time. It is shown that the bunch density longitudinal distribution and the parameters of the dispersive medium can be determined from the values of the fields and their derivatives near the leading edge of the resulting signal.