Electromagnetic properties of corrugated and smooth waveguides filled with radially inhomogeneous plasma

Conference · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:445554

Shkvarunets, A; Kobayashi, S; Weaver, J; Carmel, Y; Rodgers, J; Antonsen, Jr, T M; Granatstein, V L; Destler, W W ^[1]

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1. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)

The creation and diagnosis of plasma in high power microwave devices remains one of the primary challenges of plasma microwave electronics. In the present work the authors deal with (a) diagnostics techniques for characterization of radially nonuniform plasma columns suitable for use in high power microwave sources and (b) the effects of such plasmas on the electromagnetic properties of finite length, spatially periodic slow wave structures. Experimental studies were performed both for a strong and weak guiding magnetic field. A single Langmuir probe technique cannot be used alone for precise characterization of magnetized plasma columns, especially for measurements of the electron plasma density. However, using a combination of a novel cylindrical resonant cavity technique supported by accurate numerical calculations of the plasma influence on cavity resonances of a long, thin plasma column they were able to characterize pulsed plasma columns. The peak density and the spatial distributions of the plasma was measured as a function of the applied magnetic field and the plasma gun operating conditions. By applying a combined probe-microwave resonator (X-band) technique to plasma-filled, open, corrugated cavities the authors were able to measure in situ for the first time the complete dispersion curve of the TM{sub 01n} modes of a plasma-loaded, finite length, corrugated cavities immersed in guiding magnetic field.

• OSTI ID: 445554
• Report Number(s): CONF-960634--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
CAVITY RESONATORS
INHOMOGENEOUS PLASMA
MICROWAVE EQUIPMENT
OSCILLATION MODES
PLASMA DENSITY
PLASMA DIAGNOSTICS
PLASMA PRODUCTION
WAVEGUIDES