Simulation techniques for self-consistent treatment of electron dynamics in high power microwave tubes

This work describes the application of particle in cell techniques to the simulation of High Power Microwave Tubes. A system of codes called MASK has been developed for modeling complex microwave devices. The codes follow the time-dependent evolution of the particle dynamics and of the r.f. fields by the direct propagation of Maxwell´s equations on a numerical grid and the integration of the electron orbits in the resulting self-consistent fields. The effects of externally applied electric and magnetic fields, self-space charge and the r.f. interaction are all accounted for. The contents of this paper describe the structure and some of the details of the simulation code.