Efficiency enhancement of gyrotron based setups for technological applications

In recent years high power microwave radiation is applied for an ever increasing range of materials processing programs. The gyrotron complexes created at IAP RAS jointly with GYCOM Ltd. (N.Novgorod, Russia) allow creating materials with new qualities and do not have any analogues with similar functional capabilities. The expansion of these gyrotron based systems to novel technology and industrial applications requires efficiency enhancement. All gyrotron sources used in these systems operate at the second harmonic of the electron cyclotron resonance to reduce the energy consumption by the electromagnet and to make the power supply and cooling system for the solenoid much less operationally strained. Another major way to increase an efficiency of a whole system is performance optimization of the microwave source. The second harmonic gyrotron with output efficiency of 60% was developed and tested at IAP RAS. Record-breaking efficiency has been obtained by magnetic field profile optimization and energy recovery of the spent electron beam.