Microwave generator with virtual cathode, working in stochastic resonance regime (stochastron)

Abstract

Such phenomena as parametric resonance, three wave resonance and similar are well known in the theory of dynamic systems, but in 1981 a new dynamical phenomenon, named stochastic resonance, was discovered. This phenomenon develops itself in the following way: if a bistable system is a subject of a simultaneous influence of harmonic noise signals, then under some circumstances, the amplitude of harmonic signal and signal to noise ratio can be increased. On the contrary to ordinary resonance, where the increasing of signal's amplitude takes place during the matching of the system's eigenfrequencies with the frequency of the external signal, stochastic resonance appears when the frequency of the external signal matches with the average frequency of the system's jumps from one stable state to another under the influence of noise. That means that during the stochastic resonance, the noise energy partly transfers into the energy of regular oscillations. It is rather interesting to apply the theory of stochastic resonance to constructing of high-power microwave oscillators. The most promising impulse high-power microwave oscillators are oscillators based on virtual cathode (so-called vircators).