Compact Two-Stage Pulse Compression System for Producing Gigawatt Microwave Pulses

We present a new approach of the passive microwave pulse compression for gigawatt power generation. Two stages of resonant-cavity-based pulse compressors are cascaded and the peak power gain is multiplied to 12. Candidate passive pulse compressors and cascaded schemes are studied theoretically from the perspective of a linear time-invariant (LTI) system. The compact
$S$
-band (2.856 GHz) prototype system consists of six correction cavities and two storage cavities, with the ability to flatten the first-stage pulses and generate the two-stage compressed pulses with exponentially decaying waveforms. It compresses power pulses of 100 MW and
$3.6~\mu \text{s}$
generated by commercial klystrons to the peak power of 1.2 GW and full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) pulse durations of 100 ns. The pulse phase is controllable and the power can be combined for either input sources or outputs. This would be attractive to various applications, such as high gradient accelerator and hot dense plasma generation.