Simulation Studies of a Relativistic Klystron With Strong Input Power

As one of the potential high-power microwave devices on the level of gigawatts, relativistic klystron amplifier (RKA) can be used for power combination to further improve the radiation microwave power. Because of self-excited oscillation of the intense relativistic electron beam, the frequency and phase characteristics of general relativistic klystron devices are independent with the driven microwave pulse. In order to obtain frequency and phase locking, a method of improving the input power is put forward to inhibit these parasitic oscillations. This paper reports a particle-in-cell simulation study of the RKA´s characteristics under the condition of strong power feeding. By making use of the 500-keV 6-kA electron beam, the simulation results show that strong input power can inhibit the parasitical oscillations in cavity and modulate the beam very well with only one cavity. About 5.4-kA modulation current and a microwave with power of 1.4 GW, bandwidth of 5%, and efficiency of 50% are obtained. The new amplifier driven by the strong input power proves to be a potential device to attain high amplitude stability, high efficiency, high spectral purity, wide bandwidth, and low level of phase and amplitude noise.