Dependence of relativistic backward wave oscillator properties oneffective beam gamma |
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Authors: | Butler JM Wharton CB Furukawa S |
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Institution: | Lab. of Plasma Studies, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY ; |
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Abstract: | The operation of a backward wave oscillator (BWO) is shown to be critically dependent on the energy of the slow space-charge wave of the electron beam. Experimental work parameterizing the dependence of microwave frequency on effective beam energy, γbeam, reveals that through an understanding of electron-beam dynamics, a BWO could be systematically tuned through a desired frequency range while maintaining a high power of a few hundred megawatts and narrow frequency bandwidth, which was 400 MHz. Through variation of γbeam, 1.2 to 1.5 for the experiment, the lack of scaling of peak microwave power with the kinetic energy of the electron beam for γbeam >1.32 was observed. This effect was previously found in numerical simulation. In order to explain this effect, the relationship of the beam current to the space-charge-limiting current for increasing γbeam is examined. Dramatic evidence of pulse shortening, a phenomenon known to relativistic oscillators, was also seen |
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