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This paper investigates the properties of traveling wave-beam interaction in a rectangular helix traveling-wave-tube (TWT) for a solid sheet electron beam. The ‘hot’ dispersion equation is obtained by means of the self-consistent fleld theory. The small signal analysis, which includes the efiects of the beam parameters and slow-wave structure (SWS) parameters, is carried out by theoretical computation. The numerical results show that the bandwidth and the smallsignal gain of the rectangular helix TWT increase as the beam current increases; and the beam voltage not obviously in∞uences the small signal gain. Among difierent rectangular helix structures, the small-signal gain increases as the width of the rectangular helix SWS increases, however, the bandwidth decreases whether structure parameters a and

In this paper, we present a design where a bunched relativistic electron beam traversing inside the rectangular dielectric-loaded (DL) waveguide is used as a high power microwave generation device. Two kinds of methods of calculating the electromagnetic (EM) field excited by a bunched beam are introduced, and in the second method the calculation of EM pulse length is discussed in detail. The desired operating mode is the LSMn due to its strong interaction with the electron beam. For the designed 7.8 GHz operating frequency, with a 100 nC/bunch drive train of electron bunches separated by 0.769 ns, we find that high gradient (> 30 MV/m) and high power (> 160 MW) can be generated. An output coupler is also designed which is able to extract the generated power to standard waveguides with a 94% coupling efficiency.

A period-varying folded waveguide is formed by varying the period of a folded waveguide. It has the advantages of the space harmonic selectivity and the wide bandwidth. However, the regularities of the variety of these period-varying folded waveguides are unavailable from the published papers. In order to solve this problem, the principle of the space harmonic selectivity of a period-varying folded waveguide is analysed, and the conditions to select the space harmonic for this slow wave system are obtained. In addition, the space harmonic selectivities for a linear period-varying folded waveguide and a hyperbolic sine-varying period folded waveguide are also analysed as examples.

The periodic nonuniform folded waveguides are special structures, the physical dimension of which is between the periodic folded waveguide and the tapering period folded waveguide. Therefore, the synchronization between the microwave and the electron beam can be maintained in the whole interaction process and the periods are not tapered. In comparison with the tapering period folded waveguide, the theoretical analysis and the technological requirements for this structure are more convenient. In order to study this structure, the space harmonics are analysed, the conditions to make the m-th space harmonic synchronizing with the electron beam in the whole interaction process are present, and the dispersion curve and the coupling impedance curve are obtained by the simulation software HFSS.

A new type of printed rectangular helix slow-wave structure (SWS) is investigated using the field-matching method and the electromagnetic integral equations at the boundaries. The radio-frequency characteristics including the dispersion equation and the coupling impedance for transverse antisymmetric (odd) modes of this structure are analysed. The numerical results agree well with the results obtained by the EM simulation software HFSS. It is shown that the dispersion of the rectangular helix circuit is weakened, the phase velocity is reduced after filling the dielectric materials in the rectangular helix SWS. As a planar slow-wave structure, this structure has potential applications in compact TWTs.

On the basis of a rigorous field theory, two different physical models of attenuator and sever have been proposed. One is named High attenuation (HATT) model in which both attenuator and sever are considered as a unified attenuator, but the sever is regarded as an area of very high loss; the other is called Sever and attenuator (SATT) model in which the sever is modelled as a drift area in which the electric and magnetic fields both vanish. A complex function is derived and potential sinking effect is also considered. Thus, a set of more practical self-consistent equations of nonlinear beam-wave interaction is formulated. Simulations are carried out under the conditions of the two different physical models, and the simulation results are compared with the experimental data. The results show that in the case of single signal drive, the unknown second harmonic should be included for predicting the saturated output power. It is also evident that the SATT model and the HATT model predict the same physical nature, whereas the results predicted by the HATT model are much closer to the experimental data than those obtained from the SATT model. Therefore, these results provide a strong theoretical basis for designing broadband and high gain helix travelling wave tubes.

The output section of a helix travelling wave tube usually contains a helix pitch taper for high rf electron efficiency. By keeping the rf field as synchronous as possible with the decelerating electron beam bunches, the rf field can extract much more energy from the beam, and thus the maximum electron efficiency can be realized. Recently, a global simulated annealing algorithm has been employed to design the helix pitch profile so as to improve the electron efficiency as much as possible. From the numerical results, it is concluded that the electron efficiency can be enhanced by about 4%–8%.

We present a novel helix slow wave structure with an elliptical cross section shielded by an elliptical waveguide. The rf characteristics including dispersion properties, interaction impedance of zero mode in this structure have been studied in detail. The theoretical results reveal that weaker dispersion even abnormal dispersion characteristics is obtained with the increasing eccentricity of the elliptical waveguide, while the interaction impedance is enhanced by enlarging the eccentricity of elliptical helix.

A slow-wave structure (SWS) with two opposite gratings inside a rectangular waveguide is presented and analysed. As an all-metal slow-wave circuit, this structure is especially suited for use in millimetre-wave travelling wave tubes (TWTs) due to its advantages of large size, high manufacturing precision and good heat dissipation. The first part of this paper concerns the wave properties of this structure in vacuum. The influence of the geometrical dimensions on dispersion characteristics and coupling impedance is investigated. The theoretical results show that this structure has a very strong dispersion and the coupling impedance for the fundamental wave is several tens of ohms, but the coupling impedance for –1 space harmonic wave is much lower than that for the fundamental wave, so the risk of backward wave oscillation is reduced. Besides these, the CST microwave studio is also used to simulate the dispersion property of the SWS. The simulation results from CST and the theoretical results agree well with each other, which supports the theory. In the second part, a small-signal analysis of a double rectangular waveguide grating TWT is presented. The typical small-signal gain per period is about 0.45 dB, and the 3-dB small-signal gain bandwidth is only 4%.

We present the formulation of elliptical corrugated waveguides with a concentric circular hole using the field-matching method and the addition theorem for Mathieu functions. The dispersion equation and the mean interaction impedance of this structure are derived separately. The numerical results, which are generally based on the current approach, agree well with the results obtained by the commercial software package CST. As a slow-wave structure, this structure has potential applications in high power microwave amplifiers and possibly filtering structures.

A model for studying the ionization effects in a microwave tube has been developed. This model is simulated by a two-dimensional particle-in-cell code with the Mont Carlo collision model for the electron-neutral ionization process. The transient-state process of ion noise and ion focusing effects are observed. A simple theory about ion motion is given for interpreting the phenomenon of the ion moving to the wall of the tube when the beam is not neutralized. The computed result agrees with the experiment and simulation result.

We present a new periodic all-metal slow wave structure, a coaxial step-disc-loaded system and the dispersion characteristics of the structure. By using the field-matching method, the dispersion equation and the coupling impedance of this structure are obtained. The coaxial structure makes the bandwidth broader than that of the non-coaxial one. Compared with the coaxial disc-loaded and ridged-disc-loaded structures, the pass-band of coaxial step-disc-loaded structure is the broadest. The calculation results show that increasing the step width and decreasing the step thickness can improve the bandwidth.

A new type of partial-dielectric-loaded helical groove slow-wave structure (SWS) for millimetre wave travelling wave tube (TWT) is presented in this paper. The radio-frequency characteristics including the dispersion properties, the longitudinal electric field distribution and the beam-wave coupling impedance of this structure are analysed. The results show that the dispersion of the helical groove circuit is weakened, the phase velocity is reduced and the position of the maximum Ez is moved from the mouth to the inside of the groove after partially filling the dielectric materials in the helical groove SWS. Therefore, the dielectric-loaded helical groove SWS is suitable for a multi-beam TWT with broad band and high gain.

A novel sine-shape ridge waveguide (SSRWG) is put forward to develop the ultra-broadband high power terahertz (THz) backward-wave oscillator (BWO). It is found that this kind of slow-wave structure (SWS) possesses very wide 'cold' bandwidth and quite low transmission losses from the analyses of the electromagnetic characteristics. Moreover, the beam-wave interaction results indicate that the BWO based upon the SSRWG SWS can produce the output power exceeding 0.625 W in the frequency range from 0.617 THz to 0.99 THz. In particular, the output power at the typical operating frequency of 0.853 THz can reach 1.186 W by using the sheet electron beam of 16 kV and 8 mA. Therefore, this device has great potential to be an ultra-broadband watt-level THz radiation source.

Based on the combination of a staggered double vane slow wave structure (SWS) and round electron beam, a 200-W W-band traveling-wave tube (TWT) amplifier is studied in this paper. The main advantages of round beam operation over the sheet beam is that the round beam can be formed more easily and the focus requirement can be dramatically reduced. It operates in the fundamental mode at the first spatial harmonic. The geometric parameters are optimized and a transition structure for the slow wave circuit is designed which can well match the signal that enters into and goes out from the tube. Then a TWT model is established and the particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation results show that the tube can provide over 200-W output power in a frequency range of 88 GHz-103 GHz with a maximum power of 289 W at 95 GHz, on the assumption that the input power is 0.1 W and the beam power is 5.155 kW. The corresponding conversion efficiency and gain at 95 GHz are expected to be 5.6% and 34.6 dB, respectively. Such amplifiers can potentially be used in high power microwave-power-modules (MPM) and for other portable applications.

An open-styled dielectric-lined azimuthally periodic circular waveguide (ODLAP-CW) for a millimeter-wave traveling-wave tube (TWT) is proposed, which is a modified form of a dielectric-lined azimuthally periodic circular waveguide (DLAP-CW). The slow-wave characteristics of the open-styled DLAP-CW are studied by using the spatial harmonics method, which includes normalized phase velocity and interaction impedance. The complicated dispersion equations are numerically solved with MATLAB and the results are in good agreement with the simulation results obtained from HFSS. The influence of structural parameters on the RF properties is investigated based on our theory. The numerical results show that the optimal thickness of the metal rod can increase the interaction impedance, with the dielectric constant held fixed. Finally, the slow-wave characteristics and transmission properties of an open-styled structure are compared with those of the DLAP-CW. The results validate that the mode competition is eliminated in the improved structure with only a slight influence on the dispersion characteristics, which may significantly improve the stability of an open-styled DLAP-CW-based TWT, and the interaction efficiency is also improved.

The folded double-ridged waveguide structure is presented and its properties used for wide-band traveling-wave tube are investigated. Expressions of dispersion characteristics, normalized phase velocity and interaction impedance of this structure are derived and numerically calculated. The calculated results using our theory agree well with those obtained by using the 3D electromagnetic simulation software HFSS. Influences of the ridge-loaded area and broad-wall dimensions on the high frequency characteristics of the novel slow-wave structure are discussed. It is shown that the folded double-ridged waveguide structure has a much wider relative passband than the folded waveguide slow-wave structure and a relative passband of 67% could be obtained, indicating that this structure can operate in broad-band frequency ranges of beam-wave interaction. The small signal gain property is investigated for ensuring the improvement of bandwidth. Meanwhile, with comparable dispersion characteristics, the transverse section dimension of this novel structure is much smaller than that of conventional one, which indicates an available way to reduce the weight of traveling-wave tube.

A novel slow-wave structure (SWS), the folded double-ridged waveguide structure, is presented and its linear gain properties are investigated. The perturbed dispersion equation is derived and the small signal growth rate is calculated for dimensions of the ridge-loaded region and the parameters of the electron beam. The novel structure has potential applications in the production of high power and broad band radiation. For a cold beam, the linear theory predicts a gain of 1.1–1.27 dB/period and a 3-dB small-signal gain bandwidth of 30% in W-band. A comparison between the folded double-ridged waveguide SWS and folded waveguide SWS (FWSWS) shows that with the same physical parameters, the novel SWS has an advantage over the FWSWS on the bandwidth and electron efficiency.

A novel Ka-band folded waveguide (FW) amplifier for traveling wave tubes (TWT) is investigated. The dispersion curve and interaction impedance are obtained and compared to the normal FW circuit by numerical simulation. The interaction impedance is higher than a normal circuit through the whole band. We also study the beam-wave interaction in this novel circuit, and the nonlinear large-signal performance is analyzed by a 3-D particle-in-cell code MAGIC3D. A much higher continuous-wave (CW) output power with a considerably shorter circuit compared to a normal circuit is predicted by our simulation. Moreover, the novel FW even has a broader 3-dB bandwidth. It therefore will be useful in designing a miniature but high-power and broadband millimeter-wave TWT.

We report on experimental test of a 7.8 GHz power extractor using a dielectric loaded rectangular waveguide structure. This work is conducted at the Argonne wakefield accelerator (AWA) facility. The wakefield is excited by an electron beam travelling through a dielectric loaded rectangular waveguide, and the generated rf power is then subsequently extracted with a properly designed rf coupler. In the experiment, 30 MW of output power is excited by a 66 nC single electron bunch, and wakefield superposition by a train consisting of four bunches is also demonstrated. Both the results agree well with theoretical predictions.