A multibeam metamaterial backward wave

oscillator
Cite as: Phys. Plasmas 26, 073105 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5100159
Submitted: 15 April 2019 . Accepted: 27 June 2019 . Published Online: 22 July 2019

Hamide Seidfaraji, Ahmed Elfrgani, Christos Christodoulou, and Edl Schamiloglu

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Phys. Plasmas 26, 073105 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5100159 26, 073105

© 2019 Author(s).
 Physics of Plasmas ARTICLE scitation.org/journal/php

A multibeam metamaterial backward wave

oscillator
Cite as: Phys. Plasmas 26, 073105 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5100159
Submitted: 15 April 2019 . Accepted: 27 June 2019 .
Published Online: 22 July 2019

Hamide Seidfaraji,a) Ahmed Elfrgani,a) Christos Christodoulou,a) and Edl Schamiloglua)

AFFILIATIONS
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131-0001, USA

a)
hamidefaraji@gmail.com; elfrgan@unm.edu; christos@unm.edu; and edls@unm.edu

ABSTRACT
Microwave sources transform the kinetic energy of an electron beam into microwaves through the interaction of electrons with a periodic slow
wave structure (SWS). A metamaterial (MTM) waveguide is proposed for use in a microwave oscillator instead of a conventional periodic SWS
that has been used for a long time to generate high power microwave radiation. MTMs have interesting properties such as the negative
refractive index, low group velocity, and below cutoff propagation, among others. In this work, we study the interaction of a multibeam cathode
with a set of MTM structures inside a cylindrical waveguide. We developed a structure comprising a number of MTM metallic plates that have
periodicity in the axial direction and are repeated in the azimuthal coordinate. Using eigenmode simulations, we obtained negative dispersion
around the operating frequency where the group velocity is negative and extremely small. The fully electromagnetic, relativistic particle-in-cell
codes MAGIC and CST Particle Studio and the fully electromagnetic software tool CST Microwave Studio were used to obtain the results in
this study.
C 2019 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://
V
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5100159

I. INTRODUCTION In order to generate electromagnetic waves in these devices, two

Metamaterials (MTMs) exhibit exotic electromagnetic properties
such as negative permittivity and negative permeability which are not
found in nature. They have been used in designing passive microwave
devices such as filters, perfect lens design, antenna design, and phase
shifters.1 Because of the negative constitutive electromagnetic parame-
ters, MTMs support backward wave propagation and reverse Cherenkov
radiation.2 Recently, there has been increasing interest in investigating
the use of MTMs for designing coherent sources of high power micro-
wave (HPM) radiation.3–5 Backward wave oscillators (BWOs) and
traveling wave tubes (TWTs) are two kinds of vacuum electron devices
(VEDs) that generate and amplify the microwaves, respectively. TWTs
amplify the input RF signal, which travels with the electron beam, while
a BWO generates a backward RF output signal (vg vph < 0Þ from noise
from the explosive emission cathode and the DC electron beam. Both
BWOs and TWTs operate based on Cherenkov radiation, which gener-
ates coherent output power from an electron beam passing through a
slow wave structure (SWS) with phase velocity less than the speed of
light. In other words, the electron beam velocity and the phase velocity
of the electromagnetic wave are synchronous, which allows the kinetic
energy of the electrons to be transferred to the waves in an absolute
(BWO) or convective (TWT) instability.6
basic conditions must be satisfied: (1) an axial component of the elec-
tric field must exist to satisfy Poynting’s theorem and (2) the phase
velocity of the wave must be slightly less than the beam velocity, which
is called the Cherenkov resonance condition.
TWTs and BWOs are called Cherenkov devices because the elec-
trons radiate in a manner analogous to electrons emitting Cherenkov
radiation when they travel through a medium at a velocity greater
than the characteristic light speed in the medium. They are also
referred to as O-type devices because the electrons travel along the
axial DC magnetic field that guides them through the SWS interaction
region.
A variety of BWO designs have been investigated using different
SWSs, such as a helix,7 a rippled wall waveguide,8 a waveguide coated
with a dielectric,9 or an iris-loaded waveguide.10 A periodic SWS has
the property that its modes are composed of a Fourier sum of waves,
some of which are suitable for synchronism with the electron beam.
Instead of conventional cylindrical rippled-wall SWS, we are
motivated to investigate planar MTM-based BWOs. Two-dimensional
(2D) planar MTMs can provide the opportunity for designing a 2D
SWS in VEDs which are easier to build and cheaper from a fabrication
point of view.11 In addition, they can provide frequency agility.

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FIG. 1. Geometry of the MTM plates: (a) dimensions of an individual plate; (b) two
plates in a parallel configuration.
The use of MTMs for designing HPM-generating VEDs has been
reported in the literature.12–17 In particular, a MTM-based micro-
wave-generating BWO using a complementary split ring resonator
(CSRR) SWS to provide negative permittivity in combination with a
TM mode to interact with a high-power electron beam was designed.
The reported simulations show that, after 250 ns, the output power
of the BWO is 5.75 MW with an efficiency of 14%. The proposed
MTM-based BWO18 suffers from both a low output power <6 MW
and a long time required to reach saturation (250 ns).
The reported O-type HPM oscillator in Ref. 15 was based on a
similar idea of a microwave structure with a below cutoff circular
waveguide loaded with an array of biperiodic SRRs. They reported
that, for an applied electron beam voltage of 400 kV, an electron beam
current of 4.5 kA, and a guide axial magnetic field 2 T, an output
power of 240 MW with an efficiency of 15% can be achieved. Also, the
response time for this was 10 ns, which is much faster than the 250-ns
response in Ref. 18. However, the problems with this design are as
follows: first, the output mode is a TE21 -like hybrid mode, which is a
not a pure and practical mode; and second, it has a relatively low
efficiency.
In Ref. 16, an S-band MTM-based BWO is presented. The simu-
lated results reported show that, for an electron beam of 240 kV and a
current of 35 A, an efficiency up to 90% with the peak output power of
4.5 MW can be achieved. It was also reported that the maximum output
saturated peak power is more than 12 MW with an electronic efficiency
of 65%. The presented design in Ref. 16 has the highest efficiency
TABLE I. Dimensions of the designed MTM SWS (in millimeters).
x1 y1 g1 g2 w1 w2
Plate1 16 24 1 6 2 2
Plate2 16 24 1 16 1 1
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FIG. 2. (a) One unit cell of the MTM-loaded circular waveguide (perspective view).
(b) Front view of the MTM-loaded circular waveguide.
reported for BWOs but still suffers from the both low output power
(10 MWÞ and the long time required to reach saturation (100 ns).
A recent review article17 presents a comprehensive overview of
the use of MTMs in VEDs.
In this article, a fast growth response, efficient BWO which opti-
mizes electron beam coupling to a MTM SWS through a multibeam
interaction is proposed. There is increasing interest in designing a
BWO which does not have a large volume and at the same time can
increase electron beam interaction with SWS loads. A specific struc-
ture was developed for this purpose comprising a number of MTM
metallic plates that are periodic in the axial direction and are repeated
in the azimuthal coordinate. Unlike Refs. 15, 16, and 18, the
MTM-based BWO in this article is not based on a cutoff waveguide,
and the MTM structure designed is responsible for simultaneously
providing both negative permittivity and permeability. Simulations
show that the designed four-beam BWO with an electron beam of
440 kV and a current of 250 A per beam (1 kA in total) generates
105 MW with a rise time of about 50 ns.
One of the exotic properties of a MTM-loaded waveguide is
decreasing the phase velocity in the guiding structure. This property, in
addition to the negative refractive index, makes MTMs an interesting
candidate as a SWS load for a BWO. In addition, for HPM generation,
conventional MTMs with dielectric substrates are not suitable for use.
First, dielectrics tend to build charge and suffer from breakdown, which
leads to heating, melting, and deformation. Second, thin metallic MTM
patches (0.01 mm) can also deform in HPM environments. Thus, the
proposed MTM here is an all-metallic structure with a thickness of
more than 2 mm, which will be robust in an HPM environment.
This article describes a multibeam MTM SWS for HPM genera-
tion as an oscillator. The remainder of this article is organized as fol-
lows. Section II presents the design of the multibeam MTM HPM
TABLE II. Cutoff frequencies of the first three modes of a hollow cylindrical waveguide.
Mode Cutoff frequency (GHz)
th d
TE11 2.5
2 5 TM01 3.28
2 5 TE01 5.2
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FIG. 3. Dispersion diagram for the designed MTM with the first two modes shown
(solid red and solid blue) along with the light line (dashed black) and the beam line
(solid black).
source. Section III presents the details of the MTM-based BWO struc-
ture parameters. The conclusions are presented in Sec. IV.
II. DESIGN
Figure 1 shows the all-metallic MTM designed to be used as a
BWO. Each unit cell of the designed MTM is a pair of two parallel
plates with one plate providing negative e and the other providing neg-
ative l in the same frequency band (3–4 GHz). The MTM plates have
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FIG. 4. The group velocity of the first mode of the unit cell.
a period of 16 mm in the axial direction. The length of the plates is
24 mm, and the metal thickness is chosen to be 2 mm. Table I shows
the detailed dimensions of the MTM SWS.
Figure 2 shows the schematic of the MTM-loaded cylindrical
waveguide. Each MTM unit cell is connected to the inner wall of the
circular waveguide and is repeated in the azimuthal direction with an
angle of 90 : Thus, there are four MTM unit cells in each BWO unit
cell, and the structure is also periodic in the axial direction. The pro-
posed MTM-loaded BWO provides four distinct negative SWS media
which each can interact with separate electron beams. Since each
FIG. 5. Electric field distribution between
the MTM plates as viewed from different
angles.
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FIG. 6. Schematic showing a unit cell of the MTM-BWO and a schematic of the
entire BWO structure.
MTM unit cell is a negative refraction medium by itself, unlike Refs.
12, 13, and 16, using the cutoff waveguide is not necessary in this pro-
posed BWO. This is an advantage because the above cutoff waveguide
can handle larger powers without breakdown. The cutoff frequencies
FIG. 7. Output power of the multibeam BWO vs beam current.
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FIG. 8. Output power for a 1 kA proposed BWO.
for the first three modes (TE11 ; TM01 ; and TE01 ) of an air-filled circu-
lar waveguide with a radius of r ¼ 35 mm are presented in Table II.
The full wave solver CST Microwave Studio (MWS) was used to
simulate the eigenmodes and calculate the dispersion diagram of a sin-
gle unit cell of a cylindrical waveguide loaded with the designed MTM
(Fig. 2). The calculated dispersion diagram of the first lowest mode
from CST MWS of the structure is presented in Fig. 3 (solid red and
solid blue lines).
The eigenmode solver enforces a phase advance Du across the
structure period in the axial direction of propagation. Then, it repeats
the simulation for different phase advances to find the dispersion dia-
gram for the MTM-loaded waveguide. The dispersion diagram
describes frequency as a function of wavenumber for different modes
of the system.
In addition to the MTM SWS dispersion diagram, the beam line
of x ¼ kz  0 is also plotted in Fig. 3 to describe the interaction point,
where x is the angular frequency,  0 is the electron beam average axial
velocity, and kz ¼ pDu (p ¼ 16 mm periodicity) is the wavenumber.
For the electron beam,  0 ¼ bA c, with being c the light speed. The
2
electron rest mass is w0 ¼ me00c ¼ 511 keV. The relativistic factor cA
can be calculated19 using cA ¼ 1 þ ww ; when the applied voltage w is
0
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
chosen to be 440 keV, cA ¼ 1:8598 and bA ¼ c2A  1=cA ¼ 0.84.
Thus, the electron beam line is x ¼ kz  0 ¼ 0:84 kz c. According to
Fig. 3, the beam line intersects the dispersion diagram for the negative
dispersion of TM01 at 3.4 GHz.
The CST MWS eigenmode solver shows that the group velocity
shown in Fig. 4, tg ¼ @x @k , is less than zero and is about 0.12c for
FIG. 9. Output port signal showing the electric field (left) and magnetic field (right).
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FIG. 10. Fourier transform of the output signal.
frequencies above the cutoff of the TM01 mode (the cutoff of the TM01
mode in the empty rectangular waveguide is 3.2 GHz). At the point of
intersection, the group velocity is 0.12c, which confirms backward
wave propagation.
It is informative to investigate the field structure of the first mode
to better understand the beam-SWS interaction. Figure 5 shows the elec-
tric field distribution for a phase advance of 85 , which shows the inter-
action points for the modes with the beam line. As can be seen, the
electric field is a TM-like (Hz  0 on the axisÞ mode. Thus, the electric
field that the electron beam experiences when passing through the SWS
(emitter diameter is 1 mm) is a left-handed TM-like mode ( g  ph < 0Þ.
III. MTM-BASED BWO PARAMETERS
Conventional BWOs use rippled wall waveguides to provide for
slow waves. In any kind of oscillator, in order for oscillations to
commence, there is a minimum threshold condition. For BWOs, that
minimum threshold is called the start current Ist . If the beam current
is greater than Ist , the BWO will start to oscillate with no input.
Ist depends on the BWO geometry, frequency of operation, and elec-
tron beam parameters. Generally, the beam current is chosen as
2  Ist < Ibeam < 7  Ist for a BWO. For optimal BWO operation, the
beam current is typically 2–3 times the start current. If beam currents
go as high as 7 or greater, then we are in the cross-excitation instability
regime.20 Equation (1) gives a rough estimate of the start current and
may not be accurate for a MTM SWS, and a more accurate value for a
BWO with a specific SWS geometry can be found through particle-in-
cell (PIC) simulations,21
ðCN Þ3st
Ist ¼ 4U0 ; (1)
ZN 3
where U0 is the beam energy and N is the length of the SWS in wave-
lengths and N ¼ L=kz ; with kz being the wavelength, L being the total
length of the BWO, C being the Pierce parameter, and Z being the
interaction impedance of the SWS.21 According to Ref. 21, ðCNÞst can
be calculated to be 0.314 for the TM01 mode.
A. Multibeam backward wave oscillator and PIC
simulations
This section is dedicated to CST Particle Studio particle-in-cell
(PIC) simulations carried out to investigate the performance of the
designed MTM-loaded BWO for HPM generation.
Phys. Plasmas 26, 073105 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5100159
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Figure 6(a) shows the proposed design for the MTM-based
BWO.
Figures 6(b) and 6(c) show the entire multibeam BWO structure,
including the output guiding part. As can be seen, the length of the
SWS is 192 mm and the length of the structure including the output
ports is 420 mm.
The PIC solver was used to evaluate the performance of the pro-
posed MTM BWO. A variable current of 800 A, 1 kA, and 1.2 kA (200,
250, and 300 A per beam, respectively) and a 440 keV electron beam
with a cathode radius of 1.1 mm were used in the simulations. The
electron beam emission is based on a DC electron beam with an elec-
tron beam current rise time of 1 ns. A static axial magnetic field of
1.5 T is used to confine the electron beam moving in the axial
direction.
Figure 7 shows that, for beam currents less than 800 A (total
beam currents of all four beams), the BWO does not oscillate. Thus,
Ist  800 A for the structure. We selected the beam current to be
1.2 kA which is about 1.25–1.5 times Ist : Figure 8 shows the radiated
output power (105 MW) versus time for the MTM BWO for a total
beam current of 1 kA.
It can be seen in Fig. 8 that the BWO reaches a stable power of
105 MW after 53 ns. Figure 9 shows the output mode’s signal, and it
can be confirmed that the electron beam mainly interacts with the
TM01 mode and the output mode is pure.
Also, in Fig. 10, the Fourier transform of the output electric field
TM01 mode is presented. The output signal has a clean frequency
response oscillating at 3.4 GHz. This confirms the interaction point
predicted by the eigenmode solver earlier.
The electric field distribution is shown in Fig. 11 within the
BWO and confirms that the TM01 mode is generated at the output
port.
The PIC phase space plot of the MTM SWS is shown in Fig. 12
at t ¼ 10 ns and t ¼ 55 ns. The phase space plot helps to visualize the
absolute energy of all particles along the BWO structure (phase space
vs spatial coordinate). The phase space plots demonstrate how electron
bunching forms as the time passes.
For the proposed MT BWO, efficiency is obtained by dividing
the average steady output power by the electron beam DC input
power. An output power of 105 MW is generated from four electron
beams, each with a current of 250 A and a voltage of 440 keV.
Therefore, the efficiency of the MTM BWO is 23.8%, which is high
FIG. 11. Electric field (V/m) distribution in the proposed multibeam BWO.
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compared to what has been previously reported in the literature for
MTM structures.
If the BWO length is too short, the electron beam does not have
enough time to form bunches. If the BWO length is too long, electrons
start to take back the energy coupled to the RF before reaching the out-
put port. Thus, there is an optimum length for the best performance
of such a BWO. Figure 13 shows that changing the number of periods
of the MTM SWS changes the output power, and the maximum power
is achieved when 12 MTM unit cells are utilized.
FIG. 12. PIC phase space plot of electrons at (a) t ¼ 10 ns; (b) t ¼ 55 ns.
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IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this article, a novel multibeam MTM BWO is presented for
the first time. First, the CST MWS eigenmode solver is used to show
that the designed MTM supports negative index propagation. The PIC
solver was used to evaluate the performance of the BWO for generat-
ing power from four electron beams of total 440 keV and 1 kA current.
Simulations confirm that an output power of 105 MW with an effi-
ciency of 23.8% is generated.
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FIG. 13. Output power of a multibeam BWO vs BWO length.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by AFOSR MURI Grant No.
FA9550-12-1-0489 and ONR Grant No. N00014-16-1-2352.
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