Phase locking of high power relativistic backward wave oscillator using priming effect

The phase-locking approach using the priming effect is developed for high power relativistic backward wave oscillators (RBWO). A plasma switch is conceived to avoid the feedback effect. In experiment, multicavity RBWO of 200 MW with the 73 MHz half power bandwidth is phase-locked under the injection power ratio 0.044 for the frequency separation of 20 MHz. We found that it takes more time to reach stable phase-locking than to achieve saturation of RBWO generation. The external signal of higher power results in the longer time duration of phase locking. Besides phase-locking, the priming effect leads to longer microwave pulse duration. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3686620]