Analysis and design of overmoded coaxial Ku-band Cerenkov high power microwave oscillator with high efficiency

An overmoded coaxial Ku-band Cerenkov high power microwave oscillator with high efficiency is proposed. The distance between the inner and outer conductors of the slow wave structure (SWS) in the Cerenkov oscillator is smaller than the space wavelength of output microwave. The overmoded structure can increase the power capacity of the oscillator by increasing the transversal size of the device. The higher-order modes are introduced into the beam-wave interaction region intentionally, so that the intense relativistic electron beams (IREB) interacts with the fundamental and higher-order modes. Dual-mode operation leads impure mode component to output microwave, so the simple trapezoid inner conductor is designed to achieve mode purification and output pure TEM mode. The extractor is added at the end of the SWS, which enhances the axial electric field near the location and increases the modulation depth of the electron beam current passing through the region. The particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation results show that under the input power of 3.5 GW, the output microwave power is 1.8 GW, and the corresponding working efficiency is 51.4%, which is much higher than that of similar periodic devices. The mode of output microwave is pure TEM mode, and the maximum surface electric field intensity is 0.96 MV cm−1, which means that the probability of radio-frequency breakdown is low.