Experimental Research on an X-Band Magnetron Fed by Solid and Split Cathodes

A relativistic magnetron (RM) with diffraction output, modified from the original Kovalev, Fuks X-band magnetron (MDO) presented more than 50 years ago, has been designed and studied experimentally using pulse generators with voltage amplitudes $\le 300$ kV and pulse duration $\le 200$ ns. X-band magnetrons are naturally small devices, and for high voltages, microwave pulse shortening occurs because of cathode explosive emission plasma expansion. A split cathode can potentially solve this problem, but in this research, the MDO with split cathode experienced pulse shortening as well. It is suggested based on preliminary results of simulations using the MAGIC particle-in-cell (PIC) code that the reason for this is that this magnetron needs optimization by simulations that were not available originally.