Final Report for 'Gyrotron Design and Evaluation using New Particle-in-Cell Capability'

ITER will depend on high power CW gyrotrons to deliver power to the plasma at ECR frequencies. However, gyrotrons can suffer from undesirable low frequency oscillations (LFO's) which are known to interfere with the gun-region diagnostics and data collection, and are also expected to produce undesirable energy and velocity spread in the beam. The origins and processes leading to these oscillations are poorly understood, and existing gyrotron R and D tools, such as static gun solvers and interaction region models, are not designed to look at time-dependant oscillatory behavior. We have applied a time-domain particle-in-cell method to investigate the LFO phenomenon. Our company is at the forefront of smooth-curved-boundary treatment of the electromagnetic fields and particle emission surfaces, and such methods are necessary to simulate the adiabatically trapped and reflected electrons thought to be driving the oscillations. This approach provides the means for understanding, in microscopic detail, the underlying physical processes driving the low-frequency oscillations. In the Phase I project, an electron gun region from an existing gyrotron, known to observe LFO's, was selected as a proof-of-principle geometry, and was modeled with the curved-geometry time-domain simulation tool, in order to establish the feasibility of simulating LFO physics with this tool on office-scale, and larger, parallel cluster computers. Generally, it was found to be feasible to model the simulation geometry, emission, and magnetic features of the electron gun. Ultimately, the tool will be used to investigate the origins and life cycle within the trapped particle population. This tool also provides the foundations and validation for potential application of the software to numerous other time-dependant beam and rf source problems in the commercial arena.