Design of a W-band TE 01 mode gyrotron traveling-wave amplifier with high power and broad-band capabilities

A high-power gyrotron traveling-wave amplifier operating in the low-loss TE01 mode has been constructed at the University of California, Davis, that will be driven by a 100-kV, 5-A electron beam with a pitch angle of unity and velocity spread of 5 percent. The amplifier is predicted by large-signal simulations to generate 140 kW at 92 GHz with 28 percent efficiency, 50-dB saturated gain and 5 percent bandwidth. The stability of the amplifier from oscillation has been investigated with linear codes. The threshold current for the absolute instability of the TE01 operating mode for the chosen operating parameters is predicted to be 10 A. To suppress the potential gyro-backward-wave oscillator interactions, the interaction circuit with a cutoff frequency of 91 GHz has been loaded with distributed loss so that the single-pass attenuation is 90 dB at 93 GHz. The coaxial input coupler has a predicted and measured coupling of 1 and 2 dB, respectively. (Author)