Recent advances in theory and experiment of metamaterial-based high power radiation sources

Abstract

Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to have properties that have not yet been found in nature such as reversed Cherenkov radiation (RCR). Currently, research in metamaterials is turning from theory to application exploration. The emerging metamaterials bring new developing opportunities in the conventional high power microwaves and vacuum electronics due to the exotic properties such as miniaturization, high power and high efficiency1. In this talk, two kinds of new all-metal metamaterials are briefly introduced. Thus the novel slow-wave structures are proposed based on the metamaterials and metal waveguides operating the cut-off frequencies, which is quite different from the normal case2, 3. And then we have studied the high frequency characteristics such as dispersion, interaction impedance, and transmission and reflection properties through simulation and “cold” experiment. Finally, two metamaterials-based high power radiation sources with a sheet beam and a traditional pencil beam have been studied by PIC simulations, respectively. For the sheet beam device, the peak output power is 1.5 MW at 2.90 GHz and electronic efficiency is 12.5%. For the pencil beam device, the peak output power is 4 MW at 2.454 GHz and electronic efficiency is 31.5%. In the near future, the “hot” experiments will be done.