Academician Sergei D. Korovin: A Shortened Career in High Power Microwaves

Abstract

Summary form only given. Academician Sergei D. Korovin passed away in January 2006 when he was only 52 years old. He was a leader in high current electronics and an outstanding scientist in high power microwaves. Under Sergei's guidance, high-power relativistic microwave sources in the millimeter, centimeter, and decimeter wavelength bands were developed. Some of them, such as a double-section generator, a Smith-Purcell radiation oscillator, and high-efficiency vircators were realized for the first time. A number of repetitively-pulsed high power microwave sources, including mobile versions for experiments in nanosecond radio-location and for other applications, were created. The accelerators' engineering was essentially developed through new ideas of Sergei Korovin. Among them, the forced circulation of gas in spark gap switches, optimal matching of an accelerator to a load, and most recently the combination of a Tesla transformer with a spiral line was achieved. Since 1996 he supervised the research and development of efficient gigawatt microwave sources which provide for a tunable carrier frequency. Sergei developed the theory of of virtual cathode operation for the optimal interaction of electrons with electromagnetic fields. In 2002 the high efficiency of superradiance was demonstrated experimentally. Finally, he created a strong team at his institute and, in collaboration with other institutes and organizations, this work continues unimpeded today.