High-Frequency MW-class Coaxial Gyrotron Cavities Operating at the Second Cyclotron Harmonic

Second-harmonic operation of gyrotron oscillators offers the possibility to generate millimeter and submillimeter radiation at half the value of the magnetic field required for operation at the fundamental cyclotron frequency (first harmonic). However, being inherently weaker than the interaction at the first harmonic, high-power second-harmonic continuous-wave (CW) operation employing high-order modes faces strong mode competition from the first-harmonic competing modes. It is shown that coaxial cavities with a corrugated insert allow to drastically enhance the mode selectivity at the second harmonic and suppress the first-harmonic competitors in MW-class gyrotrons. Detailed design considerations for coaxial cavities are presented and specific cavity designs for various candidate operating modes are given. We demonstrate numerically, with multimode interaction simulations, stable second-harmonic CW generation of 2 MW output power at 170 GHz and 0.7 MW at 280 GHz, using high-order modes with eigenvalues >100. The presented results show the possibility to design second-harmonic gyrotrons with cost-effective magnet systems and achieve MW-class CW operation at frequencies above 250 GHz.