Generation of helical electron beams by a non-adiabatic gun

The design of a non-adiabatic gun to produce a 10A, 50kV hollow laminar electron beam for gyrotron applications is reported. The beam is extracted from the emitting ring in a direction parallel to the axial guide magnetic field and then propogates across the radial electric field in the anode gap. The electrons are thereby given a transverse velocity upon passing through the modulation anode region where an electrostatic pumping mechanism takes place, so that a considerable amount of the electron energy is converted to transverse kinetic energy. Such a beam extraction method gives rise to favourable features that are examined throughout the work. The dynamics of hollow electron beams with gyromotion propagating down a cylindrical drift tube are also analysed. Due to the action of the beam's self-space charge field, the transverse velocity spread has an oscillatory behaviour along the drift tube wherein the spatial automodulation period shortens with increasing current. Numerical simulation results indicate that even at a 10A beam current, the resulting transverse velocity spread is still less than the spread for a zero beam current.