Improvement the stability of operation of a high-current, plasma-filled electron gun

Abstract

In the paper, the results on the study of the stability of multi-emitter, resistive decoupled, explosive-emission cathodes operation in a high-current, plasma-filled diode are presented. Two types of the cathode were investigated: the cathode based on TBO-1 resistors and the cathode made of Ni-Cr wires. It has been shown that in comparison with traditionally used copper-braid cathodes, the resistive decoupled cathodes allow one to decrease standard deviation of the beam energy density from pulse to pulse as well as the ratio of its maximum value to its average value in series of pulses. The last parameter is of most importance for surface alloying which is very sensitive to deviation of the beam energy density.