The advances of high-frequency vacuum electron devices (VEDs) in China are reviewed in this paper, including traveling-wave tubes (TWTs) based on novel slow-wave structures (SWSs), high harmonic TWT amplifier, gyrotrons, Smith-Purcell (SP) radiation sources, surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) sources, and terahertz (THz) radiation sources in ion-focused beam-plasma system. As one of the most widely used VEDs, TWTs based on folded type SWSs, planar SWSs, and grating type SWSs are studied theoretically and experimentally from Ka-band to R-band. Using folded type SWSs, two TWT amplifiers are developed. As high-power millimeter wave and THz wave sources, gyrotron TWTs, gyrotron oscillators, and gyroklystrons are presented. Moreover, this paper shows SP radiation sources, SPPs sources, and THz radiation sources in ion-focused beam-plasma system open good prospects for developing high-frequency VEDs with new mechanisms, which undoubtedly brings about innovative changes for the development of VEDs.

We demonstrate a mechanism of efficiently transforming surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) into Cherenkov terahertz (THz) radiation. In a structure where multilayer graphene is deposited on a dielectric substrate with a buffer layer, the energy of the SPPs can be significantly enhanced. The dispersion of SPPs crosses the light line of the substrate if the buffer layer has a low permittivity relative to the substrate. As a result, the SPPs can be readily transformed into radiation without the need of wavevector compensation. Compared to the radiation from structures without graphene, the radiation power density is enhanced by nearly three orders of magnitude due to the field enhancement of SPPs. Our results could provide a promising way for developing room temperature, tunable, coherent, and intense THz radiation sources to cover the entire THz regime.

This article reports a slow-wave structure (SWS) working at 1 THz which can be fabricated through nano-computer numerical control (nano-CNC) technology for the first time. First, a 1 THz deformed quasi sine waveguide (D-QSWG) SWS has been designed and simulated in this article. To reduce the metal loss of input and output waveguide, a coupler which transit the waveguide to over mode rectangular waveguide has been designed. The simulation result shows that input and output waveguides with this coupler have lower metal loss than that of WR1 rectangular waveguide. To fabricate the designed D-QSWG SWS, tungsten steel endmills have been used. The fabricated SWS has the surface roughness around 58–74 nm, the corresponding effective conductivity is around $2\times 10^{{7}}$ –1.85 $\times 10^{{7}}$ S/m. And the cold test results show that the insertion loss of the fabricated model is less than 30 dB while the reflection loss is less than −15 dB in the frequency range of 0.998–1.016 THz, which has a good consistency with the simulated results. The beam-wave interaction simulation results based on the cold test results show that the designed D-QSWG traveling wave tube (TWT) has the output power of 300 mW, and the 3 dB bandwidth is around 3 GHz.

This paper explores the physics of the electromagnetic diffraction radiation of a subwavelength holes array excited by a set of evanescent waves generated by a line charge of electron beam moving parallel to the array. Activated by a uniformly moving line charge, numerous physical phenomena occur such as the diffraction radiation on both sides of the array as well as the electromagnetic penetration or transmission below or above the cut-off through the holes. As a result the subwavelength holes array becomes a radiation array. Making use of the integral equation with relevant Green’s functions, an analytical theory for such a radiation system is built up. The results of the numerical calculations based on the theory agree well with that obtained by the computer simulation. The relation among the effective surface plasmon wave, the electromagnetic penetration or transmission of the holes and the diffraction radiation is revealed. The energy dependence of and the influence of the hole thickness on the diffraction radiation and the electromagnetic penetration or transmission are investigated in detail. Therefore, a distinct diffraction radiation phenomenon is discovered.

The concept and experimental results of a light source given in a recent paper by Adamo et al. [ Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 113901 (2009)] are very interesting and attractive. Our paper presents detailed theoretical investigations on such a light source, and our results confirm that the mechanism of the light radiation experimentally detected in the published paper is a special kind of diffraction radiation in a waveguide with nanoscale periodic structure excited by an electron beam. The numerical calculations based on our theory and digital simulations agree well with the experimental results. This mechanism of diffraction radiation is of significance in physics and optics, and may bring good opportunities for the generation of electromagnetic waves from terahertz to light frequency regimes.