Nonlinear theory of gyrotwystrons with stagger-tuned cavities

A nonlinear theory is developed to study the effects of stagger tuning on the gain and the bandwidth of stagger-tuned gyrotwystrons operating in the large-signal regime. The assumption that prebunching cavities are short and therefore the electron bunching proceeds mainly in the drift regions allows us to use a simple point-gap model of the prebunching section to study this problem. Studies of gyrotwystrons with one- and two-prebunching stagger-tuned cavities have been carried out in the large-signal, saturation regime and show that two-cavity gyrotwystrons are preferred over one-cavity gyrotwystrons for significantly larger gain, bandwidth and gain-bandwidth product. The comparison of our results with a previous gyrotwystron design shows good agreement and validates our model.