Development of a Low Frequency Multipactor Testbed

The University of New Mexico is designing, building and testing a multipactor testbed based on a microstrip transmission line in order to further investigate multipactor effect. A horn shaped,
$50 \Omega$
Al microstrip line is placed inside a six-port stainless steel chamber that is vacuumed down to high
$\sim 10-7$
torr. Single frequency signals are fed into a rf amplifier, with a bandwidth of 0.25-105 MHz, that is capable of reaching 120W average (CW) power. Two methods, global and local methods, are implemented for accurate multipaction detection. The former method consists of third harmonics detection and reflected power, whereas a Channeltron electron multiplier makes up the latter. Additionally, numerical simulations via CST and SPARK3D have been carried out to get the secondary electron yield (SEY) as well the evolution of secondaries for a given geometry and material type.