Analyse eines neuartigen 1.5 MW, 170 GHz Prototyp-Gyrotrons mit koaxialem Resonator

Abstract

A 170 GHz, 2 MW coaxial cavity gyrotron is under development at the Institut fur Hochleistungsimpuls- und Mikrowellentechnik (IHM) at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK) which will be used as a high power microwave source for heating, current drive and stability control of plasmas in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). At frequencies above about 100 GHz the output power of conventional gyrotrons with cylindrical hollow waveguide cavities is limited to 1 MW in CW operation mainly due to the high Ohmic losses and the space charge voltage depression of the electron beam. The coaxial geometry enables a reduction of the mode competition in the gyrotron resonator and decreases also the influence of the beam voltage depression. As result a very high order operating mode (for example TE 34,19 at 170 GHz) can be chosen which ultimately allows to increase the output power of the gyrotron in CW operation to a value as high as 2 MW. A first prototype of the 170 GHz, 2 MW coaxial cavity gyrotron has been designed, built and experimentally tested in short pulse operation at FZK. The main goal of this work was to investigate experimentally the design of the critical gyrotron components such as electron gun, resonator and a quasi-optical RF system. Those components are same as used in the first industrial coaxial prototype gyrotron for ITER. During the experiments a strong instability was observed inside the gyrotron tube due to the excitation of parasitic low frequency oscillations. The mechanism of the oscillations has been studied and possibilities for their suppression of these oscillations are proposed and experimentally verified. The RF output system is one of the most critical components. It is responsible for the coupling of the gyrotron power out of the gyrotron by converting the microwave power generated in the TE 34,19 -mode into a fundamental free space TEM 0,0 Gaussian mode. The performance of the RF output system has been tested in low power cold measurements. To perform the cold tests of the RF output system, the TE 34,19 -mode was excited at 170 GHz using a special low power mode generator. The results of the experimental tests and the general problems associated with the design of the coaxial cavity gyrotron are presented and discussed in this thesis.