Photon acceleration-based radiation sources
- University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-0484 (United States)
- University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095 (United States)
The acceleration and deceleration of photons in a plasma provides the means for a series of new radiation sources. Previous work on a DC to AC Radiation Converter (DARC source) has shown variable acceleration of photons having zero frequency (i.e., an electrostatic field) to between 6 and 100 GHz (1-3). These sources all had poor guiding characteristics resulting in poor power coupling from the source to the load. Continuing research has identified a novel way to integrate the DARC source into a waveguide. The so called 'pin structure' uses stainless steel pins inserted through the narrow side of an X band waveguide to form the electrostatic field pattern (k{ne}0, {omega}=0). The pins are spaced such that the absorption band resulting from this additional periodic structure is outside of the X band range (8-12 GHz), in which the normal waveguide characteristics are left unchanged. The power of this X band source is predicted theoretically to scale quadratically with the pin bias voltage as -800 W/(kV){sup 2} and have a pulse width of -1 ns. Cold tests and experimental results are presented. Applications for a high power, short pulse radiation source extends to the areas of landmine detection, improved radar resolution, and experimental investigations of molecular systems.
- OSTI ID:
- 21205397
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Journal Name: AIP Conference Proceedings Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 472; ISSN 0094-243X; ISSN APCPCS
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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