USA As Represented by Secretary of the Navy

J Laurence Safter

Phillip A Sprangle

Victor L Granatstein

Kwo R Chu

Adam T Drobot

An apparatus for amplifying coherent radiation at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths includes the combination of a travelling-wave-tube cyclotron-maser-amplifier structure and a magnetron-injection electron gun. The amplifier structure includes a fast-wave drift tube and an electromagnetic wave launcher within the bore of a superconducting magnet. The magnetron-injection electron gun is also within the bore of the magnet and is coupled to the drift tube. As a travelling wave is launched in a preferred mode in the drift tube, the electron gun injects an annular beam of relativistic electrons having both large energy transverse to the axis of the device and small energy spread into the drift tube so that the electrons gyrate at their cyclotron frequency in orbits about the lines of the axial magnetic field produced by the magnet. The travelling wave is amplified by extracting energy from the relativistic electron beam. Efficiency of this energy transfer is optimized by tapering the magnetic field near the output end of the wave-beam interaction region.

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Alexandria, VA, United States of America

J Laurence Safter