Virtual prototyping of a 5 MW conventional magnetron

Researchers at the Air Force Research Laboratory´s (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate have begun work on designing a conventional magnetron to produce 5 MW of peak power at 3GHz. This magnetron will be capable of delivering long pulse average power with a duty cycle of >10%. The Improved Concurrent Electromagnetic Particle in Cell (ICEPIC) code is used to perform numerical simulations of this source. ICEPIC is a massively parallel finite-difference time-domain electromagnetic solver capable of performing simulations with the high resolution and particle counts required for virtual prototyping. The baseline design will be a 900 MHz 1.5 MW magnetron previously developed by AFRL that will require extensive scaling and geometrical modifications to meet the new power and frequency requirements. Design challenges include the operational magnetic field and keeping electric fields within the smallest gaps of the magnetron below breakdown levels.