The DEMATRON—A new crossed-field amplifier

A nonreentrant beam, distributed-emission, crossed-field, forward-wave amplifier, the DEMATRON, is described. The difficulties encountered by early experimenters in achieving gain in excess of 6 db in nonreentrant, crossed-field amplifiers are overcome in the DEMATRON by use of either an electron velocity taper or circuit velocity taper. A crossed-field amplifier design theory is given which is based on the use of equivalent magnetrons, and which takes into account the need for velocity compensation. In practice, electron velocity compensation is accomplished by either changing the sole-anode spacing, or by varying the dc magnetic field or a combination of both. Experiments with the DEMATRON have yielded gains in excess of 10 db over a 15 per cent bandwidth. Power levels between 300 and 500 kw have been achieved at an operating voltage of 25 kv. The design theory has been experimentally shown to be quite satisfactory in the large-signal, saturated gain region of operation, However, the lack of adequate small-signal theory has thus far prevented full optimization of the velocity compensation.