Simulation study of vircators with field emission cathode

Virtual cathode oscillators (vircators) are pulsed, high-power microwave generation devices with the advantages of configuration simplicity and wide frequency-tuning ability. The ability of electron beam pre-modulation in field emission cathode makes us to use it as electron source in vircators. Some current density models for the field emission had been proposed like Fowler-Nordheim equation for microscopic flat plate diode and relativistic Child-Langmuir equation for diode with the space charge limited effect. In this paper we investigate the characteristics of the vircators with field emission cathode via computer simulation. The particle-in-cell simulation code MAGIC was used in this study.