Excitation of parasitic modes in gyrotrons with fast voltage rise

Abstract

Megawatt-class, long-pulse and continuous-wave gyrotrons operate in high-order modes in order to handle the thermal losses in the resonators. The spectral density of neighboring modes in these devices is high; consequently during the beam voltage rise parasitic modes can be excited. If such gyrotrons are used in plasma experiments, these parasites can be dangerous for the receiving channels of numerous diagnostic tools. It is shown that in gyrotrons utilizing diode-type magnetron injection guns the shortening of the voltage rise time to about one microsecond can practically eliminate excitation of parasitic modes even in devices with a 2MW power level. Some means for realizing such rise times in high-voltage modulators which can be used for megawatt-class gyrotrons are discussed. It is also shown that allowable beam voltage overshoot in such gyrotrons is about 2.5%.