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Based on the principle of electron cyclotron maser (ECM), gyrotrons are among the most promising devices to generate powerful coherent terahertz (THz) radiation and play a vital role in numerous advanced THz applications. Unfortunately, THz ECM systems using a conventional high-Q cavity were theoretically and experimentally demonstrated to suffer from strong ohmic losses, and, accordingly, the wave output efficiency was significantly reduced. A scheme to alleviate such a challenging problem is systematically investigated in this paper. The traveling-wave operation concept is employed in a 1-THz third harmonic gyrotron oscillator, which strengthens electron-wave interaction efficiency and reduces the ohmic dissipation, simultaneously. A lossy belt is added in the interaction circuit to stably constitute the traveling-wave interaction, and a down-tapered magnetic field is employed to further amplify the forward-wave (FW) component. The results demonstrate that the proportion of ohmic losses is nearly halved, and output efficiency is nearly doubled, which is promising for further advancement of high-power continuous-wave operation of the ECM-based devices.

The unconditional security of quantum key distribution (QKD) can be guaranteed by the nature of quantum physics. Compared with the traditional two-dimensional BB84 QKD protocol, high-dimensional quantum key distribution (HD-QKD) can be applied to generate much more secret key. Nonetheless, practical imperfections in realistic systems can be exploited by the third party to eavesdrop the secret key. The practical beam splitter has a correlation with wavelength, where different wavelengths have different coupling ratios. Using this property, we propose a wavelength-dependent attack towards time-bin high-dimensional QKD system. What is more, we demonstrate that this attacking protocol can be applied to arbitrary d-dimensional QKD system, and higher-dimensional QKD system is more vulnerable to this attacking strategy.

Dynamics of the axial mode transition process in a 0.33-THz second-harmonic gyrotron is investigated to reveal the physical mechanism of realizing broadband frequency tuning in an open cavity circuit. A new interaction mechanism about propagating waves, featured by wave competition and wave cooperation, is presented and provides a new insight into the beam-wave interaction. The two different features revealed in the two different operation regions of low-order axial modes (LOAMs) and high-order axial modes (HOAMs) respectively determine the characteristic of the overall performance of the device essentially. The device performance is obtained by the simulation based on the time-domain nonlinear theory and shows that using a 12-kV/150-mA electron beam and TE−3,4 mode, the second harmonic gyrotron can generate terahertz radiations with frequency-tuning ranges of about 0.85 GHz and 0.60 GHz via magnetic field and beam voltage tuning, respectively. Additionally, some non-stationary phenomena in the mode startup process are also analyzed. The investigation in this paper presents guidance for future developing high-performance frequency-tunable gyrotrons toward terahertz applications.