Electron beam coupling to a metamaterial structure

Abstract

Microwave metamaterials have shown promise in numerous applications, ranging from strip lines and antennas to metamaterial-based electron beam driven devices. In general, metamaterials allow microwave designers to obtain electromagnetic characteristics not typically available in nature. High Power Microwave (HPM) sources have in the past drawn inspiration from work done in the conventional microwave source community. In this article, the use of metamaterials in an HPM application is considered by using an effective medium model to determine the coupling of an electron beam to a metamaterial structure in a geometry similar to that of a dielectric Cerenkov maser. Use of the effective medium model allows for the analysis of a wide range of parameter space, including the “mu-negative,” “epsilon-negative,” and “double negative” regimes of the metamaterial. The physics of such a system are modeled analytically and by utilizing the particle-in-cell code ICEPIC. For this geometry and effective medium representation, optimum coupling of the electron beam to the metamaterial, and thus the optimum microwave or RF production, occurs in the epsilon negative regime of the metamaterial. Given that HPM tubes have been proposed that utilize a metamaterial, this model provides a rapid method of characterizing a source geometry that can be used to quickly understand the basic physics of such an HPM device.