Experimental realization of a transvertron oscillator for high power microwaves

Summary form only given, as follows. A new type of electromagnetic instability, the transvertron, has recently been studied in theory, simulation, and experiment. While the theory and simulation indicate strong oscillation, experiments have had difficulty in producing clean microwave power which can be attributed to this instability. The transvertron promises relatively high efficiency due to a large saturation amplitude. Results of simulations, theory, and experiment suggested that difficulty in observing oscillation could be due to the low growth rate associated with this instability. Careful comparison between the simulation and experimental results in previous work led to the conjecture that the cavity in the simulation had significantly more noise associated with it than in the real experiment. Since the growth rate is low, the microwave growth in earlier experiments was only observed when the electron beam pulse was nearly over