Abstract:
As a kind of high power microwave generator, the plasma relativistic microwave generators (PRMGs) have the virtues of wideband high power microwave output and fine frequency tunability. Thus PRMG is very useful for a wide variety of applications. The beam-wave interaction region in the PRMG is generally a cylindrical metal waveguide with preformed annular plasma. The dispersion characteristics of the operating slow plasma wave TM
01 mode (called as P-TM
01 mode below) in the interaction region are critical to the output properties. Therefore, the dispersion characteristics and field distributions of the P-TM
01 mode in a cylindrical waveguide loaded with annular plasma beam is studied numerically using the all electromagnetic PIC (Particle-in-Cell) code. Variation trends of the dispersion characteristics and the field distributions of the P-TM
01 mode with the density
np, radial thickness Δ
rp and radial position
rp of the plasma beam, the intensity of the guiding magnetic field
Bz and the radius of the waveguide
rw are obtained. Simulation results show that: (1) Both
np and Δ
rp affect the dispersion characteristics markedly and the frequency of the P-TM
01 mode increases with the increasing of either
np or Δ
rp at the same axial wave number
kz. (2) Variations of
rp,
rw or
Bz have very slight influence on the dispersion in the interested range. It is indicated that one can choose relatively larger dimensions of the waveguide for larger power capacity and lower guiding magnetic field for compactness if necessary. (3) The basic features of the field distributions of the P-TM
01 mode will not change with the variations of the above mentioned physical parameters. But with the increasing of axial mode number and
kz, the electromagnetic energy will be trapped inside the plasma beam gradually and no effective beam-wave interaction will happen in the end. Therefore, it is suggested to choose the operating point with relatively small
kz for the efficient operation of PRMG.