Monte Carlo Analysis of Occurrence Thresholds of Multicarrier Multipactors

Abstract

The newly discovered “long-term” multicarrier multipactors that can be induced by low-energy electric fields potentially threatens the reliability of spaceborne microwave systems. It also causes a new technical challenge to the prediction of the global occurrence threshold of multicarrier multipactors. In this paper, we propose efficient approaches to rapidly compute the fluctuation of space electrons in the evolving process of a multicarrier multipactor, based on which Monte Carlo approaches are developed to efficiently find the global “worst case” waveforms and the occurrence thresholds for both “single-event” and “long-term” multipactors. The proposed approaches can be used for wideband devices, providing an efficient integrated solution for the multicarrier multipactor analysis for practical high-power microwave devices with inhomogeneous field distribution.