X-band relativistic BWO with 3 GW pulse power

Summary form only given, as follows. At high powers of generation, as the electric field strength on the surface of electrodynamic structure rises, limitation of pulse duration is observed in microwave sources. One of the reasons of this phenomenon is that the generation is affected by explosive electron emission excited on the surface of electrodynamic structure by intense high frequency electric fields. In this paper, the results of study of a 3 cm relativistic BWO with lowest electric wave TM/sub 01/ of circular waveguide are presented. The experiments have been conducted using the high current repetitively-pulsed electron accelerator SINUS-7 constructed at HCEI. The maximum parameters of the accelerator are as follows: electron energy up to 2.0 MeV and the beam current up to 20 kA in single-shot regime and 1.5 MeV and 15 kA at a repetition rate of 100 p.p.s. The pulse duration is 45 ns. In experiments, the maximum microwave power 3 GW was obtained, with an efficiency of generation about 20% and the pulse duration about 6 ns. It was observed that the duration of the microwave pulse depends on the power, rising at lower powers. Typically, it is closed in order to the estimated time of appearance of explosive emission centers on the surface of BWO slow wave structure.