Self-excitation of microwave oscillations in plasma-assisted slow-wave oscillators by an electron beam with a movable focus.

Plasma-assisted slow-wave oscillators (pasotrons) operate without external magnetic fields, which makes these devices quite compact and lightweight. Beam focusing in pasotrons is provided by ions, which appear in the device due to the impact ionization of a neutral gas by beam electrons. Typically, the ionization time is on the order of the rise time of the beam current. This means that, during the rise of the current, beam focusing by ions becomes stronger. Correspondingly, a beam of electrons, which was initially diverging radially due to the self-electric field, starts to be focused by ions, and this focus moves towards the gun as the ion density increases. This feature makes the self-excitation of electromagnetic (em) oscillations in pasotrons quite different from practically all other microwave sources where em oscillations are excited by a stationary electron beam. The process of self-excitation of em oscillations has been studied both theoretically and experimentally. It is shown that in pasotrons, during the beam current rise the amount of current entering the interaction space and the beam coupling to the em field vary. As a result, the self-excitation can proceed faster than in conventional microwave sources with similar operating parameters such as the operating frequency, cavity quality-factor and the beam current and voltage.