Novel transit-time oscillator (TTO) combining advantages of radial-line and axial TTO*

Abstract

A novel transit-time oscillator (TTO) is proposed in this paper. An axial cathode which has been widely used in high power microwave (HPM) source and an extractor with radial feature are adopted. In this way, the inherent advantages of axial and radial TTO, both of which can be utilized as high-quality intense relativistic electron beam (IREB), can be generated and the power capacity is also increased. The working mode is π/2 mode of TM01 based on small-signal theory, and under the same energy storage, the maximum electric field in extractor decreases 16.3%. Besides, by utilizing the natural bending of the solenoid, this TTO saves over 60% of the length required by the uniform magnetic field, and consequently reduces the energy consumed by solenoid. The PIC simulation shows that by using 1.0-T decreasing magnetic field generated by the shorter solenoid, 3.37-GW microwave at 12.43 GHz is generated with 620-kV and 13.27-kA input, and the overall conversion efficiency is 41%.