Abstract
A high-power gyrotron traveling-wave amplifier operating in the low-loss TE 01 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 (v ⊥ /v z ) of unity and velocity spread of 5%. The amplifier is predicted by large-signal simulations to generate 140 kW at 92 GHz with 28% efficiency, 50-dB saturated gain and 5% bandwidth. The stability of the amplifier from oscillation has been investigated with linear codes. The threshold current for the absolute instability of the TE 01 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.