Demonstration of a 140-GHz 1-kW Confocal Gyro-Traveling-Wave Amplifier

• Main Authors: Temkin, Richard J. (Contributor), Sirigiri, Jagadishwar R. (Contributor), Joye, Colin D. (Contributor), Shapiro, Michael (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Plasma Science and Fusion Center (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2010-03-10T15:26:27Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 The theory, design, and experimental results of a wideband 140-GHz 1-kW pulsed gyro-traveling-wave amplifier (gyro-TWA) are presented. The gyro-TWA operates in the HE [subscript 06] mode of an overmoded quasi-optical waveguide using a gyrating electron beam. The electromagnetic theory, interaction theory, design processes, and experimental procedures are described in detail. At 37.7 kV and a 2.7-A beam current, the experiment has produced over 820 W of peak power with a -3-dB bandwidth of 0.8 GHz and a linear gain of 34 dB at 34.7 kV. In addition, the amplifier produced a -3-dB bandwidth of over 1.5 GHz (1.1%) with a peak power of 570 W from a 38.5-kV 2.5-A electron beam. The electron beam is estimated to have a pitch factor of 0.55-0.6, a radius of 1.9 mm, and a calculated perpendicular momentum spread of approximately 9%. The gyro-amplifier was nominally operated at a pulselength of 2 mus but was tested to amplify pulses as short as 4 ns with no noticeable pulse broadening. Internal reflections in the amplifier were identified using these short pulses by time-domain reflectometry. The demonstrated performance of this amplifier shows that it can be applied to dynamic nuclear polarization and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy.