To investigate the excitation technique of high pressure gas lasers by high power microwave discharges, a WR-650 waveguide circuit was assembled. The pulsed microwave source was a magnetron transmitter with a frequency of 1355 MHz, a nominal pulsed power of 2.5 MW and a pulse length of 4 microsecond(s) . The pulse repetition frequency was 10 Hz. A double ridge waveguide coupling structure was designed. The results from these experiments have shown the need for a high power broadband modulateable microwave source to achieve further knowledge important for the design of compact, high power microwave excited lasers. For these purposes, a former radar transmitter, based on an amplifier chain terminated by a klystron, was modified. The transmitter has a center frequency of 1400 MHz with an instantaneous bandwidth of 100 MHz, a pulsed power of 10 MW, a maximum pulse length of 6 microsecond(s) and a maximum repetition frequency of 450 Hz. The amplifier chain is driven by a dielectric resonance oscillator which is pulse modulated by very fast pin diodes. This design allows the generation of multiple pulses within the 6 microsecond(s) time window with microwave pulse rise times of the order of ten's of nanoseconds. The results obtained with this equipment will be presented.

Date Published: 1 April 1991
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 1411, Pulse Power for Lasers III, (1 April 1991); doi: 10.1117/12.43617

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1411:
Pulse Power for Lasers III
G. Glen McDuff, Editor(s)