Design and performance of a beam-deflection multiplier tube

This paper deals with the development of a vacuum tube to serve as a general multiplier device. In the tube a suitable unipotential gun shoots an electron beam through the region of two orthogonal sets of deflection plates upon a collection electrode in the form of four insulated quadrants. The input signals are applied to the deflection plates and shift the beam area over the collection electrode. A current output is obtained which is proportional to the instantaneous product of the two input signals. The device can accept positive and negative values of input signals. The electron gun was designed to produce a well focused electron beam, having uniform current density and relatively large area at the collection electrode. Limitations imposed on such requirements were analyzed in detail together with the current density distribution over the collection electrode in the two cases of circular and rectangular beams. In the collection electrode a suppressor plate was used behind the four quadrants and a description of its function is given. The high-frequency limitations to the performance of the tube was found to result mainly from the stray capacitances associated with the collection electrode. The influence of the operating conditions on the performance of the tube is given.