A virtual cathode oscillator(VCO) with a resonant cavity is presented and investigated numerically and theoretically,and its efficiency and stability are enhanced. An equivalent circuit method is introduced to analyze the resonant cavity composed of anode foil and feedback annulus, and a theoretical expression for the fundamental mode frequency of the resonant cavity is given. The VCO is investigated in detail with a particle-in-cell method. We obtain the microwave frequencies from simulation, theoretical expression, and relative references, and draw three important conclusions. First, the microwave frequency is a constant when the diode voltage is changed from 588 kV to 717 kV. Second, the fluctuation of the microwave frequency is very small when the AK gap is changed from 1.2 cm to 1.6 cm. Third, the microwave frequency agrees with the theoretical result. The relative error, which is calculated according to the theoretical and simulation frequencies, is only1.7%.
The magnetically insulated line oscillator(MILO) is a gigawatt-class, coaxial crossed-field microwave tube, which is at present a major hotspot in the field of high-power microwaves(HPM) research. In order to improve the power conversion efficiency and eliminate or at least minimize anode plasma formation in the load region and radio frequency(RF) breakdown in the slow wave structure(SWS) section, an X-band MILO is presented and investigated numerically with KARAT code. The design idea is briefly presented and the simulation results are given and discussed. In the simulation, HPM is generated with peak power of 3.4 GW, maximum electric field of about 1 MV/cm, and peak power conversion efficiency of 14.0%, when the voltage is 559.1 kV and the current is 43.2 kA. The microwave frequency is pure and falls in the X-band of 9.0 GHz. The theoretical investigation and the simulation results are given to prove that the anode plasma formation and the RF breakdown can be effectively avoided or at least minimized,respectively.
A tunable magnetically insulated transmission line oscillator(MILO) is put forward and simulated. When the MILO is driven by a 430 k V, 40.6 k A electron beam, high-power microwave is generated with a peak output power of 3.0 GW and frequency of 1.51 GHz, and the relevant power conversion efficiency is 17.2%. The 3-d B tunable frequency range(the relative output power is above half of the peak output power) is 2.25–0.825 GHz when the outer radius of the slow-wave structure(SWS) vanes ranges from 77 mm to 155 mm, and the 3-d B tuning bandwidth is 92%, which is sufficient for the aim of large-scale tuning and high power output.
