Influence of Collector Plasma on the Performance of an L-Band MAC-MILO

The influence of collector plasma has been investigated for an L-band magnetically insulated line oscillator (MILO) with metal array cathode (MAC), which showed obvious performance degradation after 3000 shots in repetitive mode. Positive ion emission model is applied to simulate plasma generation from the collector surface. Different types of positive ions have been applied to simulate different collector materials. The simulation results reveal that the collector plasma has a significant influence on the output characteristics of the original MAC-MILO. The ladder cathode structure is introduced to reduce plasma formation rate on the collector surface. The simulation and experimental results show that the optimized structure reduces the influence of collector plasma successfully.