Experimental Hot Test Results of a Metamaterial-Enhanced Resistive Wall Amplifier Prototype

Abstract

The Metamaterial-Enhanced Resistive Wall Amplifier (MERWA) is theoretically predicted to offer high gain rates with a modest bandwidth. The MERWA operates via space charge wave growth due to interaction with a metamaterial that has been engineered to provide an inductive-resistive admittance to the edge of beam. Previous work has shown that an inductive-resistive metamaterial could be implemented using a periodic array of thin lossy wires. We have implemented and tested an experimental low-power prototype to validate the theory. This work details experimental hot test results.