Cumulative interaction in the deflection cavities of a high-power magnicon amplifier

A major factor limiting the output power of a high-power magnicon is RF breakdown in its penultimate cavity. Utilization of the principal of angle summing allows us to achieve cumulative interaction between a beam and RF fields of the magnicon deflection system, and thus to decrease the maximum electric field in the penultimate cavity. In this paper, the problems of implementing a cumulative interaction in a magnicon deflecting system are discussed. A deflecting system with coupled cavities working according to the principal of angle summing, which has been tested with success experimentally, has a limitation caused by instabilities that can limit pulse duration at a power level higher than a few tens of milliwatts. The method described employs a set of uncoupled penultimate cavities to obtain cumulative interaction at high power without sacrifice of pulsewidth.