Design study of an electron gun for a high power microwave source

Abstract

This paper describes a design study for a high-current DC thermionic electron gun. This gun is to be used for an electron generator for a high-power microwave source such as a relativistic backward wave oscillator. The designed gun showed a capability of producing an annular electron beam with very a high current of 1 kA at a 1-MeV beam energy. Obtaining such a high current beam was possible by achieving a relatively high compression ratio of about 210, which in turn was obtained by carefully optimizing the gun geometry.