Extracting microwave energy from a cavity by mode conversion at a coupling window.

A study is made of the production of high power nanosecond rf pulses by extracting microwave energy from an oversized cavity by means of conversion, at a coupling window, of the high-Q working mode to an auxiliary mode which is strongly coupled to an external load. It is shown that microwave rf pulse compressors with copper storage cavities and energy extraction by mode conversion at a coupling window can provide gains of 5–13 dB with output signal durations of 20–150 ns and peak powers of 5–10 MW in the 3-cm band and 50–100 MW in the 10-cm band. Rf pulses lasting 30 ns with peak powers of 0.5 MW have been obtained experimentally at a frequency of 9.4 GHz with a gain of 9 dB. © 1998 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]