High-Power Recirculating Planar Crossed-Field Amplifier Design and Development

The recirculating planar crossed-field amplifier (RPCFA) was designed and simulated using the finite-element frequency-domain code ANSYS HFSS and the particle-in-cell (PIC) code MAGIC. The RPCFA is a high-power microwave device adapted from the recirculating planar magnetron, developed at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. Electromagnetic (EM) PIC simulations of a planar, meander line, and slow wave structure demonstrated 13.5-dB amplification of a 1.3-MW, 3-GHz signal to approximately 29 MW. The RPCFA is designed to be driven by pulsed power from the Michigan electron long beam accelerator-ceramic insulator, which is currently configured to deliver pulses at -300 kV, 1-10 kA, with 0.3-1 μs pulse lengths. The RF input-drive signal will be provided by an MG5193 magnetron which delivers 5-μs pulses up to 2.6 MW at 3 GHz. EM PIC simulations also demonstrated zero-drive stability of the design and were used to evaluate changes in performance resulting from variations of several experimental parameters. Variation of the drive frequency suggested that the RPCFA is expected to have a 3-dB amplification bandwidth of 300 MHz or 10%.