Experimental verification of the advantages of the transparent cathode in a short-pulse magnetron

Recently, considerable attention has been given to the development of different means of providing rapid start-of-oscillations in pulsed relativistic magnetrons. The innovative University of Michigan's (UM's) methods of priming: cathode priming, magnetic priming and RF priming have shown improvement in the start of oscillations. At the University of New Mexico (UNM) we have been able to show via particle-in-cell (PIC) computer simulations fast start, fast rate of build-up of oscillations and significant improvement in the output characteristics of a magnetron using the transparent cathode. The three-dimensional PIC code MAGIC was used for the simulations. Experiments were performed using UNM's SINUS-6 accelerator with an applied voltage of 260 kV in 17 ns.