Multipactor experiment on a dielectric surface

Summary form only given, as follows. A novel experiment to investigate single-surface multipactor on a dielectric surface was developed. The experiment consists of a small brass microwave cavity in a high vacuum system. The cavity is /spl sim/15 cm in length with an outer diameter of /spl sim/10 cm. A pulsed, variable frequency microwave source at /spl sim/21.4 GHz, 100 W-4500 W peak excites the TE/sub 111/ mode with a strong electric field parallel to a dielectric slab (/spl sim/.2 cm thickness) that is inserted at the mid-length of the cavity. The microwave pulses are monitored by calibrated microwave diodes. An electron probe measures electron current and provides temporal measurements of the multipactor electron current with respect to the microwave pulses. Multipactor is observed to occur simultaneous to microwave power initiation. Phosphor is used to detect multipactor electrons by photoemission. E/sub RF/ measurements are made using bead pull perturbation analysis. The motivation of this experiment is to verify recent theoretical calculations of single surface multipactor on a dielectric.