Effect of the thickness of electron beams on the gyrotron efficiency

In this paper the effect of the spread in the radii of electron guiding centers on the gyrotron efficiency is studied. First, the analytical theory is developed for describing this effect in gyrotrons operating in regimes of soft and hard self-excitations. Then, study of this effect in a 670 GHz gyrotron is carried out both analytically and numerically with the use of the available nonstationary self-consistent code. Comparison of results demonstrates very reasonable agreement between numerical data and analytical predictions. It was found that in the case of beam injection at the inner peak of the function describing the beam coupling to the wave the spread in electron guiding center radii can be significantly larger than is usually allowed. This fact greatly alleviates the design of electron guns for terahertz-range gyrotrons. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3467036]