Design and Experimental Study of a High-Gain W-Band Gyro-TWT With Nonuniform Periodic Dielectric Loaded Waveguide

Gyrotron traveling wave tubes (gyro-TWTs) are of considerable interest for high-power millimeter and submillimeter radiation sources. The analytical design and experiment of a W-band gyro-TWT loaded with nonuniform periodic lossy dielectric rings is presented in this paper. The gyro-TWT is operating in the circular TE01 mode at the fundamental cyclotron harmonic, and driven by a 60 kV, 8-A gyrating electron beam with velocity ratio 1.2. Hot test results were: 1) maximum peak output power 112 kW; 2) 69.7-dB saturated gain; and 3) 23.3% efficiency at 93.5 GHz. The measured bandwidth with peak power greater than 90 kW is about 4 GHz in the range of 93-97 GHz. The hot test results show excellent agreement with the theoretical prediction. The potential backward wave oscillations involving the spurious modes TE11, TE21, and TE02 are effectively suppressed by the nonuniformly loaded periodic lossy dielectric rings. The W-band gyro-TWT is zero-drive stable at the operating points. It demonstrates that a nonuniform loaded lossy dielectric structure is excellent for suppressing potential spurious oscillations.