Novel quasioptical W-band gyro-TWT

The availability of high power sources and amplifiers in the millimeter wave band would lead to the development of exciting new applications such as millimeter wave radar (94 GHz) for both civilian and military use in meteorology, high resolution tracking, imaging and detection of sea skimming missiles. Higher power operation demands larger transverse dimensions of the interaction structure for reducing the thermal load. Such overmoded structures need good mode-selectivity for efficient operation. We present the design of a novel quasioptical gyrotron traveling-wave tube (gyro-TWT) amplifier in the W-band with quasioptical components for the input coupler, interaction structure and a novel sever. A proof-of-the-principle experiment for this design is currently being setup at MIT. This gyro-TWT can deliver output powers comparable to the recent gyro-klystron experiments at NRL and CPI at significantly larger bandwidth. The feasibility of the novel quasioptical interaction structure was proved by the successful confocal gyrotron oscillator experiments at MIT.