Particle Physics Laboratory      Millimeter-wavelength free-electron lasers in  PPL  JINR


Microwave system of the FEL-oscillator

In the experiment a two-mirror Bragg resonator with the parameters close to calculated ones was used. It was consisted of 22 mm diameter circular waveguide and two Bragg reflectors in the form of waveguide sections with the same diameter and weak corrugation of side walls. As an operating wave the lowest H11 wave of the circular waveguide was chosen. In correspondence with calculations, two effective reflections into backward waves were observed in "cold" microwave measurements of the Bragg reflectors: in E11 wave in the vicinity of the frequency 31.5 GHz and in E12 wave in the vicinity of 37.5 GHz. The width of these reflection zones was about 2% and 3% correspondingly. The maximum reflection was 95% for te cathode-side reflector and 85% for the collector-side reflector for the both reflection zones. The resonator with such reflectors and 40 cm length regular part had four high-Q-factor longitudinal modes (with different numbers of variation along longitudinal coordinate) in the both zones. Maximum Q-factor of these modes was about 1000.
Photograph of Bragg mirrors      Photograph of the Bragg mirors of different length.
 
Reflectivity of Bragg mirrors
Type of backward wave
H1,1
E1,1
E1,2
Bragg reflection band, GHz
28,2...29,9
30,6...32,1
37,9...39,0
Length of reflector, cm
Reflection coefficients, %
16,2
66
82
92
10,8
51
63
73
5,4
38
57
65
Note, that there were modes in this resonator which were caused by the reflections of operating wave to the backward wave of the same type (H11) at the frequency near 29 GHz. However, the maximum reflection coefficient in this case did not exceed 50%. This value was rather small for the threshold of generation of the FEL with such resonator.

   The new RF-input  (Denisov's splitter) for FEL-amplifier was designed in cooperation with IAP (Nizhny Novgorod). It uses the effect of RF-beam multiplication  in nonregular rectangular waveguide. The main features of the splitter are high efficiency of the RF-power input (about 85%) and absence of any elements in the beam aperture.

The input scheme is also shown in the figure (PDF format - 12.5 kB).


Back to FEL page

Last updated 26.02.98.                                                Sergey N. Sedykh      Contact E-mail: snsed@sunse.jinr.ru