Abstract :
A new, and rather unusual, design is being developed for a high power microwave (HPM) electron-beam amplifier, that is expected to attain multi-megawatt output power levels, with either a high duty cycle or even a continuous wave (CW) operation. The new amplifier design is also expected to attain very high efficiencies, very high spectral purity, and very low levels of phase and amplitude noise. Very high efficiency is attained by letting a high-current, relativistic electron beam (HIREB) circulate around a closed, re-entrant multi-turn orbit, within a strong-focusing system, including beam-guiding magnetic dipoles and magnetic quadrupole lenses, aligned in an azimuth-periodic lattice. An exact, closed-form expression is given for the integrated path-length of a reentrant, multiturn, toroidal/helical equilibrium orbit, as a function of the azimuth angle. The use of such an orbit characterizes the new type of HPM amplifier, that synergistically combines the basic principles of the relativistic klystron amplifier (RKA) with those of electron storage rings.
Keywords :
microwave power amplifiers; phase noise; random noise; relativistic electron beam tubes; amplitude noise; azimuth-periodic lattice; beam-guiding magnetic dipoles; closed-form expression; continuous wave; duty cycle; electron storage rings; helical electron orbits; high power microwave amplifier; magnetic quadrupole lenses; microwave electron-beam amplifier; phase noise; re-entrant multi-turn orbit; relativistic electron beam; relativistic klystron amplifier; spectral purity; toroidal electron orbits; Electrons; High power amplifiers; Low-noise amplifiers; Magnetic noise; Microwave amplifiers; Operational amplifiers; Orbits; Power amplifiers; Power generation; Toroidal magnetic fields;
