First bandwidth measurements of a novel gyrotron amplifier are presented. The coupling between the second harmonic cyclotron mode of a gyrating electron beam and the radiation field occurred in the region of near infinite phase velocity over a broad bandwidth by using a cylindrical waveguide with a helical corrugation on its internal surface. With a beam energy of 185 keV, the amplifier achieved a maximum output power of 1.1 MW, saturated gain of 37 dB, linear gain of 47 dB, saturated bandwidth of 8.4 to 10.4 GHz ( $21\%$ relative bandwidth), and an efficiency of $29\%$, in good agreement with theory.

A new microwave system in the form of a cylindrical waveguide with a helical corrugation of the inner surface is proposed for a gyrotron traveling wave tube (gyro-TWT). The corrugation radically changes the wave dispersion in the region of small axial wave numbers. This allows significant reduction in the sensitivity of the amplifier to the electron velocity spread and an increase in its frequency bandwidth. An $X-\mathrm{band}$ gyro-TWT operating at the second cyclotron harmonic with a 200-keV, 25-A electron beam produced an output power of 1 MW, corresponding to a gain of 23 dB and an efficiency of 20%.

Experimental results are presented of the first successful gyrotron backward wave oscillator (gyro-BWO) with continuous frequency tuning near the low-terahertz region. A helically corrugated interaction region was used to allow efficient interaction over a wide frequency band at the second harmonic of the electron cyclotron frequency without parasitic output. The gyro-BWO generated a maximum output power of 12 kW when driven by a 40 kV, 1.5 A, annular-shaped large-orbit electron beam and achieved a frequency tuning band of 88\char21{}102.5 GHz by adjusting the cavity magnetic field. The performance of the gyro-BWO is consistent with 3D particle-in-cell numerical simulations.

The experimental results of a thermionic cusp electron gun, to drive millimeter and submillimeter wave harmonic gyrodevices, are reported in this paper. Using a “smooth” magnetic field reversal formed by two coils this gun generated an annular-shaped, axis-encircling electron beam with 1.5 A current, and an adjustable velocity ratio α of up to 1.56 at a beam voltage of 40 kV. The beam cross-sectional shape and transported beam current were measured by a witness plate technique and Faraday cup, respectively. These measured results were found to be in excellent agreement with the simulated results using the three-dimensional code MAGIC.

Helically corrugated waveguide has been used in various applications such as gyro-backward wave oscillators, gyro-traveling wave amplifier and microwave pulse compressor. A fast prediction of the dispersion characteristic of the operating eigenwave is very important when designing a helically corrugated waveguide. In this paper, multi-mode coupling wave equations were developed based on the perturbation method. This method was then used to analyze a five-fold helically corrugated waveguide used for X-band microwave compression. The calculated result from this analysis was found to be in excellent agreement with the results from numerical simulation using CST Microwave Studio and vector network analyzer measurements.

Experimental results of the observation of coherent stimulated radiation from subnanosecond electron bunches moving through a periodic waveguide and interacting with a backward propagating wave are presented. The subnanosecond microwave pulses in Ka and W bands were generated with repetition frequencies of up to 25 Hz. The mechanism of microwave pulse generation was associated with self-bunching, and the mutual influence of different parts of the electron pulse due to slippage of the wave with respect to the electrons; this can be interpreted as superradiance. The illumination of a panel of neon bulbs resulted in a finely structured pattern corresponding to the excitation of the ${\mathrm{TM}}_{01}$ mode. Observation of rf breakdown of ambient air, as well as direct measurements by hot-carrier germanium detectors, leads to an estimate of the absolute peak power as high as 60 MW for the 300-ps pulses at 38 GHz. These results are compared with numerical simulations. The initial observation of 75-GHz, 10–15-MW radiation pulses with a duration of less than 150 ps is also reported.