Theoretical and experimental results of a compact industrial microwave free electron maser system

The role of microwaves within material technologies has so far been a minor one, this is because the availability of the magnetron source, which can only provide distributed heating, with simple amplitude modulation control. However, we have designed a tunable source, industrial free electron maser (IFEM), which provides sufficient pulsed peak power for various applications, in material processing. This requires focused microwave power, similar to a laser beam, to achieve high power density. In this paper, the theoretical results of the interaction region will be explained as well as the principal of operation and IFEM system set-up. The design and construction of the system main components including electron gun, wiggler magnet, cavity resonator and energy recovery section are reported. Results of the effective industrial use of IFEM to enable striking and maintaining low-pressure plasmas and sufficient average power to perform experiments using germicidal UV and ozone generating lamps are described.