High-Efficiency Excitation of a Third-Harmonic Gyrotron

High-harmonic gyrotrons are challenging to generate high interaction efficiency and simultaneously suppress the mode competition. Investigation in this paper reveals that a high-Q cavity is potential to realize high efficiency in a 94-GHz third-harmonic TE02 mode gyrotron. Unfortunately, the high-Q cavity exhibits severe mode competition from the lower harmonic modes. A start-up scenario of active parameter control is employed to suppress the mode competition. The third-harmonic TE02 mode gyrotron finally achieves the steady single-mode operation with efficiency up to 20%. The physical mechanism during the mode formation process is theoretically investigated according to frequency-domain and time-domain nonlinear theories. The theoretical investigation in this paper is of guidance for future developing high-harmonic gyrotrons, especially toward terahertz applications.