Plasma expansion and impedance collapse in a foil-less diode for a klystronlike relativistic backward wave oscillator

Klystronlike relativistic backward wave oscillator (RBWO) can produce microwave power exceeding 5 GW with a high efficiency larger than 40%. In the experiment of klystronlike RBWO, for about 1 MV peak diode voltages, increasing magnetic field from 1.43 to 1.89 T slowed the impedance collapse until it was suppressed completely. The introduction of a stainless steel obstructing ring aggravated the impedance collapse, whereas replacing the stainless steel obstructing ring with a flat stainless steel provided a more stable impedance variation during the pulse duration. These impedance collapses did not affect microwave generation seriously and may be attributed to the radial expansion of cathode plasma initialing from the cathode shank so that part of reverse currents were collected at the anode wall, contributing to the measured diode current. On the other hand, it was found that microwave generation shot-to-shot reproducibility was closely related to the diode impedance variation. When there was no or very low microwave measured, diode impedance collapse appeared at the latter of the pulse. The microwave generation shot-to-shot reproducibility was improved greatly after the electron collector was enlarged on radius with 1 mm. A possible explanation is that the anode plasma produced from electron collector expands axially and enters the diode region at a very high velocity of several mm/ns. The movement of the anode plasma in the beam-wave interaction region affects the microwave generation, which reduces the microwave power during the whole pulse duration significantly.