Influence of cathode emission uniformity on microwave generation in relativistic backward wave oscillator

The emission uniformity of explosive emission cathodes is important to the operation of high power microwave generators. Although this concept seems to be widely accepted, the concrete influence of cathode emission uniformity on microwave generation has not been researched in detail and many conclusions on this matter are ambiguous due to the lack of solid evidence. This paper makes an effort to research this issue with particle-in-cell simulations about an X-band relativistic backward wave oscillator. To keep the diode impedance unchanged, an emission model in which each emission cell is artificially assigned a specific current density is adopted. The emission non-uniformity is simulated in three ways: spaced emission, large-area no-emission, and local enhanced emission. The simulation results uncover three phenomena: first, no significant influence is found for the cathode emission uniformity on the microwave starting time as long as no obvious mode competition is excited by emission non-uniformity; second, bad emission uniformity may bring about reduction of microwave power, but this may not happen when the emission non-uniformity is just localized to a few discrete strong emission points; third, under specific circumstances, the emission non-uniformity may lead to the excitation of mode competition, which can significantly delay the starting time and lower the microwave power.