Stabilization of the potential multi-steady-state absolute instabilities in a gyrotron traveling-wave amplifier

Abstract

The problem of spurious oscillations induced by absolute instabilities is the most challenging one that hinders the development of the millimeter-wave gyrotron traveling-wave amplifiers (gyro-TWTs). A spurious oscillation exists as a high order axial mode (HOAM) in the interaction circuit. This paper is devoted to demonstrating the complicated steady states of these HOAMs and exploring corresponding techniques to stabilize these potential multi-steady-state absolute instabilities. The stability-oriented design principle is conveyed in a start-to-end design flow of a Ka-band TE11 mode gyro-TWT. Strong magnetic tapering near the downstream port, which is capable of cutting short the effective interaction circuit of a spurious oscillation and simultaneously boosting the amplification performance, is for the first time proposed to further improve the system stability. It is also found that an ideal prebunched electron beam in the linear stage is the necessary condition to efficient amplification in the nonlinear stage, suggesting that it is feasible to design a stable prebunching stage to replace the distributed-loss-loaded linear stage. The stability-oriented design principle provides more explicit reference for future design of a zero-drive stable gyro-TWT.