Compact, High Power Microwave Amplifier

"High power microwave (HPM) sources have important potential application in a variety of military and non-military areas. One of the key stepping stones to reaching many of these applications is the development of a source capable of gigawatt level poweroutput in a microsecond long pulse at a reasonable repetition rate. In addition, it would be highly desirable if this source were reasonably compact. A fast-wave amplifier such as the ubitron is the best choice for ultra-high-power applications. Wepropose to investigate a variation of the ubitron amplifier coupled with a compact Marx generator that holds promise for satisfying all of the above stated criteria. The discriminating attributes of a ubitron is its potential for a relatively wideinstantaneous bandwidth, its wide-band tunability, and its potential for very high power operation. Significant military high power microwave (HPM) directed energy weapon and countermeasure applications exist at various pulse energy levels andfrequencies, which will benefit from the proposed SBIR project. Non-DoD/commercial applications that could make use of such a source include material processing, pipeline cleaning, future TeV particle accelerators, and plasma heating of fusion energydevices."