High power activeX-band pulse compressor using plasma switches

Abstract

Results obtained in several experiments on active rf pulse compression at X band using a magnicon as the high-power rf source are presented. In these experiments, microwave energy is stored in high-Q TE 01 and TE 02 modes of two parallel-fed resonators, and then discharged using switches activated with rapidly fired plasma discharge tubes. Designs and high-power tests of several versions of the compressor are described. In these experiments, coherent pulse superposition was demonstrated at a 5-9 MW level of incident power. The compressed pulses observed had powers of 50-70 MW and durations of 40-70 ns. Peak power gains were measured to be in the range of 7:1-11:1 with efficiency in the range of 50%-63%.

Ultrashort Microwave Pulse Generation by Passive Pulse Compression in a Compact Reverberant Cavity

“…The compression efficiency of our experimental system is less than 10%. This number is significantly lower than the reported efficiency of other pulse compression systems typically ranging between 40-60% [3][4][5][6][7][8]. The low efficiency of our compressor is primarily due to the loss in the cavity, which is evident from the transfer function plotted in Fig.…”

“…An active pulse compressor consists of a resonant cavity with an embedded switch where narrowband microwave energy is stored in the cavity until the switch is tuned on to generate a sudden shift in the eigenmodes, temporarily destroying the cavity Q and causing the release of the energy in the form of a short, high power pulse [3][4][5]. A passive approach is to use a dispersive waveguide structure, where an input pulse containing the inverse dispersion profile is compressed into a short pulse with enhanced peak power as a result of the effective cancelation of dispersion [6][7][8].…”

X-band active-passive rf pulse compressor with plasma switches

“…11.4 GHz magnicon [4][5][6]. In these experiments, several different types of plasma switches were used as the active elements.…”

“…In these experiments, several different types of plasma switches were used as the active elements. The best result was demonstrated with a twochannel microwave compressor with plasma switches and combined microwave input/output element [6]. In experiment [6], short 110-cm-long storage cavities and switches with relatively high reflection coefficients (R d $ 0:6) were used.…”

High power microwave switch employing electron beam triggering with application to active rf pulse compressors

“…It is widely accepted that microwave pulse compression is required for future TeV-scale electron-positron linear colliders using external rf drive in order to achieve the necessary high pulsed power levels. For this purpose, passive compression has been developed and implemented [1,2], and active pulse compression has recently been investigated [3][4][5]. Passive compression relies upon phase modulation of the primary pulse; currently, the maximum power achieved by passive compression amounts to 500 MW for a compressed pulse duration of 400 ns at 11.4 GHz [2].…”