Contribution to the theoretical study of a high power microwave radiation produced by a relativistic electron beam

This thesis is dedicated to the study of microwave radiation produced by relativistic electron beams. The vircator (virtual cathode oscillator) is a powerful microwave source based on this principle. This device is described but the complexity of the physical processes involved makes computer simulation necessary before proposing a simplified model. The existent M2V code has been useful to simulate the behaviour of a vircator but the representation of some phenomena such as hot points, the interaction of waves with particles lacks reliability. A new code CODEX has been written, it can solve Maxwell equations on a double mesh system by a finite difference method. The electric and magnetic fields are directly computed from the scalar and vectorial potentials. This new code has been satisfactorily tested on 3 configurations: the bursting of an electron beam in vacuum, the evolution of electromagnetic fields in diode and the propagation of waves in a wave tube. CODEX has been able to simulate the behaviour of a vircator, the frequency and power are well predicted and some contributions to the problem of origin of microwave production have been made. It seems that the virtual cathode is not directly involved in the microwave production. (A.C.)