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Radio frequency (RF) breakdown is one of the crucial factors limiting the power capacity of high-power microwave (HPM) generators. In this paper, a waveguide cavity has been designed to study quantitatively the influence of temperature on high-gradient RF breakdown. The two planes of the waveguide cavity are divided into a strong-field side and a weak-field side with the feeding of microwave signals. The temperature of the strong-field side of the waveguide cavity can be adjusted from ambient temperature (25 °C) to 435 °C by loading a resistive wire heater. The breakdown threshold of the waveguide cavity decreases apparently with the increase in the temperature. The breakdown threshold at 408 °C is 751 kV/cm, which is about 150 kV/cm lower than that at ambient temperature. In addition, the higher the temperature, the more pronounced the pulse shortening. Under the same microwave power injection, the averaged pulse width of HPM after passing through the waveguide cavity at 408 °C is equal to 17.6 ns, shortened by about 1/3 compared to that at ambient temperature. The quantitative study of the influence of temperature on the RF breakdown provides a new guideline for exploring breakdown suppression methods in HPM generators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An oversized Ku-band Cerenkov oscillator with pure TM01 mode output is proposed. By utilizing a separated slow-wave structure (SSWS), the resonant characteristic of the operating mode is preserved, whereas the resonant characteristics of the high order electromagnetic modes are destroyed. As a result, only the expected mode can be stimulated, and undesired beam–wave interactions are suppressed effectively. In terms of an oversized Cerenkov oscillator, the usage of SSWS shows great potential for obtaining pure operating mode output. By utilizing particle-in-cell simulation, microwaves with an output power of 4.5 GW and frequency of 14.1 GHz are obtained, when the beam voltage is 0.9 MeV, and the beam current is 12.9 kA. The percentage of the operating mode is up to 99.5% and exceeds 99% in a wide range of the beam voltage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]