Some characteristics of the ammonia maser amplifier

Abstract

Theory is developed for the mid-band saturation characteristics of the ammonia maser amplifier and also for the variation of maser bandwidth with gain. Experimental results are presented for both saturation and gain-bandwidth measurements and these are compared with calculated values. For a gain of 20 dB the output saturation power is typically 10-12 W, whilst the bandwidth is in the region of 200 Hz.