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Title: Efficiency enhancement of high power vacuum BWO's using nonuniform slow wave structures

Journal Article · · IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States)
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/27.338268· OSTI ID:6535551
;  [1];  [2]; ; ;  [3]; ;  [4]
  1. Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM (United States). Pulsed Power and Plasma Science Lab.
  2. Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States)
  3. Russian Academy of Sciences, Tomsk (Russian Federation). Inst. of High Current Electronics
  4. Air Force Material Command, Kirtland AFB, NM (United States). Advanced Weapons and Survivability Directorate

The Sinus-6, a high-power relativistic repetitively-pulsed electron beam accelerator, is used to drive various slow wave structures in a BWO configuration in vacuum. Peak output power of about 550 MW at 9.45 GHz was radiated in an 8-ns pulse. The authors describe experiments which study the relative efficiencies of microwave generation from a two-stage nonuniform amplitude slow wave structure and its variations without an initial stage. Experimental results are compared with 2.5 D particle-in-cell computer simulations. The results suggest that prebunching the electron beam in the initial section of the nonuniform BWO results in increased microwave generation efficiency. Furthermore, simulations reveal that, in addition to the backward propagating surface harmonic of the TM[sub 01] mode, backward and forward propagating volume harmonics with phase velocity twice that of the surface harmonic play an important role in high-power microwave generation and radiation.

OSTI ID:
6535551
Journal Information:
IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States), Vol. 22:5; ISSN 0093-3813
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English