Fields and trajectories in the magnicon

The magnicon is a new type of deflection-modulated microwave amplifier that has great potential for high-power, high-efficiency microwave generation. The magnicon has two TM110 cavities, each with fields rotating at microwave frequencies. The first cavity deflection-modulates an electron beam into an expanding spiral path, and the second extracts kinetic energy from the modulated beam. Static magnetic fields employed in the second cavity produce cyclotron motion at frequencies that are multiples of the microwave frequency. The results of calculations performed on this beam-wave system, with a first-order numerical model, provide guidance for magnicon experimental designs. Field calculations have also been done with the three-dimensional electromagnetic field simulation code, MAFIA. The field and trajectory calculations demonstrate that very high output power and dc-to-rf conversion efficiencies are possible with the magnicon