Gigawatt peak power generation in a relativistic klystron amplifier driven by 1 kW seed-power

Abstract

An S-band high gain relativistic klystron amplifier driven by kW-level RF power is proposed and studied experimentally. In the device, the RF lossy material is introduced to suppress higher mode excitation. An output power of 1.95 GW with a gain of 62.8 dB is obtained in the simulation. Under conditions of an input RF power of 1.38 kW, a microwave pulse with power of 1.9 GW, frequency of 2.86 GHz, and duration of 105 ns is generated in the experiment, and the corresponding gain is 61.4 dB.

Oversized coaxial output cavity for Ka band relativistic klystron

“…Recently, millimetre and sub‐millimetre wave science and technology have attracted great attention, especially millimetre and sub‐millimetre wave sources [1–5]. As one of the most promising devices for developing high‐power microwave sources, the relativistic klystron amplifier (RKA) has attracted worldwide attention due to its unique characteristics such as high power, high efficiency, amplitude and phase stability [6–8]. However, the output power of the RKA will decrease significantly in the millimetre wave regime, which is mainly due to its physical restrictions such as the space charge limited current and the surface field breakdown [9].…”