IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 65, NO.

11, NOVEMBER 2018 5103

3-D Nonlinear Theory for Sheet-Beam

Folded-Waveguide Traveling-Wave Tubes
Fengying Lu , Manfred Grieser, Changing Zhang, and Yong Wang

Abstract — A 3-D frequency-domain nonlinear model for

sheet beam (SB) traveling-wave tubes (TWTs) based on
folded waveguides (FWs) is presented in this paper. The SB
with finite thickness is a 3-D asymmetric system. To char-
acterize such a system, an accurate description of the radio
frequency (RF) fields and the space charge (SC) fields in
the interaction gap in all three dimensions is required. An
analytical expression for the interaction electric fields is
derived. Beside of the interaction electric fields, a mod-
ified analytical model for the dispersion and interaction
impedance is also imbedded in our code predicting the
cold characteristics of the waveguide, which agrees with
the results of the 3-D simulation code CST. As a result,
the model provides a through predictive capability from the
geometrical parameters to the device performance, such as
saturation power and gain. Due to the short computing time,
our code is very useful for the large-scale optimizations of
TWTs. For the calculation of the SC field, a particle-in-cell
method is used by solving the 3-D Helmholtz equation and
the motion equation. Such analytical technology is much
more preferable to interpret the complicated beam–wave
interaction than the conventional electron beam models,
which attributes to the ever-increasing computing capacity
of the computers. These features have been incorporated in
the development of our large-signal code SB-FWTWT-3-D.
The validation of the model is performed and comprehen-
sive results are presented.
Index Terms — Beam–wave interaction, folded
waveguide (FW), sheet beam (SB), traveling-wave
tube (TWT).
I. I NTRODUCTION
OLDED-WAVEGUIDE traveling-wave tube (FW-TWT)
F is becoming increasingly important in terahertz devices
due to its suitability for high-frequency operation. In recent
years, lots of novel slow-wave structures (SWSs) based on
FW, such as gap-groove FWs and ridge-vane-loaded FWs,
are analyzed for improving the performance of FW-TWTs in
Manuscript received June 22, 2018; revised August 24, 2018 and
September 7, 2018; accepted September 18, 2018. Date of publication
October 3, 2018; date of current version October 22, 2018. This work
was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
under Grant 11475182. The review of this paper was arranged by Editor
R. Carter (Corresponding author: Yong Wang.)
F. Lu and Y. Wang are with the Institute of Electronics, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China, and also with the Uni-
versity of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China (e-mail:
nineteen_32@126.com; ywang3845@sina.com).
M. Grieser is with the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics,
69117 Heidelberg, Germany (e-mail: manfred.grieser@mpi-hd.mpg.de).
C. Zhang is with the Institute of Electronics, Chinese Academy of
Siences, Beijing 100190, China (e-mail: c.q.zhang@163.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TED.2018.2871848
Fig. 1. Schematic of the SB-FWTWT.
the terahertz band [1]–[4]. Among them, higher interaction
impedance and output power can be obtained from FW-TWTs
with a sheet-beam (SB) tunnel in comparison with the conven-
tional circular beam (CB) FW-TWTs. Moreover, introducing
an SB tunnel can decrease the machining difficulties at tera-
hertz band [5]–[7].
The majority of simulation work has been carried out
by using the particle-in-cell (PIC) codes, such as CST and
MAGIC. While being potentially very accurate, PIC code
modeling generally requires long running time and a large
amount of memory in order to achieve a high accuracy.
To analyze the beam–wave interaction more efficiently, large-
signal models for FW-TWTs were constructed in many works.
These models are the hybrid model (such as TESLA-FW and
CHRISTINE-FW), three-port network model (BWISFW), and
models based on finite-difference excitation equation and gen-
eralized radio frequency (RF) field equation [8]–[10]. Among
them, TESLA and CHRISTINE codes have been applied to
design a G-band FW-TWT which operation was recently
demonstrated [11].
A 3-D model for SB TWTs, particularly for a planar circuit
SB-TWT, was developed in [12]. Due to the discontinuity of
the electromagnetic field seen by the electrons, the beam–
wave interaction in the FW-TWTs only occurs in the gaps
of the beam tunnel in the FW. Peng et al.[13] described
another time-dependent nonlinear theory for a conventional
FW-TWT. The space charge (SC) field was expressed by
solving the Poisson equation. For an electron beam with a
sheet cross section, the alternating current SC fields induced
by the electron modulation and the SC fields are more compli-
cated. Furthermore, frequency-domain models, in comparison
to time-domain models, can shorten the calculation time and
speed up the design process.
The method presented in this paper differs from earlier
works in the following three aspects: the models used in
TESLA-FW, CHRISTINE-FW, and BWISFW are mixtures
of lumped elements and waveguides segments. However,

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5104 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 65, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2018

is the length of the straight waveguide. The electromagnetic

wave propagates in the FW and meets the electrons in the
interaction gap.
To describe the electromagnetic fields in the FW-SWS,
the electromagnetic wave is expanded with harmonic waves.
The electromagnetic field can be expressed as [16], [17]
 1/2 
Erf (x, t) = fn (z, t)en (x) exp (− j wn t)/Sn (z) + c.c.
n
Fig. 2. Sketch of the FW-SWS with an SB tunnel.  1/2 
Hrf (x, t) = fn (z, t)hn (x) exp(− j wn t)/Sn (z) + c.c.
n
equivalent circuits are not always preferred and the selection
(1)
of adequate equivalent circuits is difficult and requires jus-
tification for each particular SWS type [14]. In this paper, where Sn (z) is the longitudinal component of the normalized
the dispersion and electric fields in the interaction gap are power flow in the structure without electron beam; c.c. is
represented with analytical expressions. The SC field and the complex conjugate of the first term; wn is the angular
equations of electron motion are obtained by solving the dis- frequency of the nth pattern wave; and f n (z, t) denotes
crete Helmholtz equation and Lorentz equation, respectively. the normalized amplitude of the electromagnetic field. en (x)
Furthermore, the number of spatial dimensions used in our and hn (x) are the solutions to Maxwell’s equations in the
description of the beam and the interacting fields differs from empty SWS (without electron beam) under proper boundary
earlier publications where pencil beams are used. Such 1-D conditions.
models that represent the beam as a sequence of disks or With λ H (see Fig. 1) representing the interaction period
rings are generally adequate if the beam is highly confined length, the power flow Sn (z) can be expressed as
with minimal radial motion and small radial variation of the  
1 z+λ H dz
axial RF electric field across the beam cross section. The Sn (z) = d x d y ẑ
2 z λH
2-D simulation codes are not subject to the above-mentioned  ∗A 
limitations. In SB-FW-TWTs, because the assumption of · en (x) × hn (x) + en (x) × hn∗ (x) . (2)
azimuthal symmetry is invalid and the fields in the horizontal The relationship between Erf (x, t), Hrf (x, t), and the beam
direction (x-axis) and vertical direction (y-axis) cannot be current density J(x, t) can be described by substituting
ignored anymore, 2.5-D or 3-D large-signal models have to be (1) into Ampere theorem and Faraday theorem. With (2) and
used to achieve accurate predictions. Furthermore, the avail- a series of transformations, the dynamic equation in the steady
able models for FW-TWT structures are developed for FWs state (∂/∂t = 0) describing the evolution of the electromag-
with a CB tunnel, in which the azimuthal symmetry simplifies netic field amplitude can be derived as [17]
the model complexity and are not suitable to describe FWs  
∂
with an SB tunnel. Thus, it is necessary to develop an efficient + αn (z) fn (z)
computer code for SB-FW-TWTs to provide useful alternatives ∂z
 z+λ H 
to the 2-D and 3-D PIC simulations. 1 dz
= − 1/2 d x d yJ(x)en∗(x) (3)
In this paper, an efficient steady-state frequency-domain 2Sn z λH A
3-D large signal code-named SB-FWTWT-3-D is developed, where α (z) indicates the attenuation per unit length caused
particularly for SB-FW-TWTs. The methodology to calculate by the nonperfect conductor. The second integration in (3) is
the electromagnetic field adopted in [15] has been extended in done across the cross section area A of the beam tunnel.
this model to Cartesian coordinates. This paper is organized as In opposite to previous nonlinear model in which the digi-
follows. In Section II, the generalized frequency-domain for- tized RF field profile en (x) was exported from the electromag-
mulas of the electromagnetic fields, SC fields, and the electron netic simulation software, such as HFSS and CST, a relatively
motion are described. A comparison of the electromagnetic simple 3-D analytical method to calculate the electromagnetic
field calculated by the SB-FWTWT-3-D code and CST is field in the interaction gap is developed in this paper.
presented. In Section III, the nonlinear model is applied to a It is assumed that only the eigenmode TE10 propagates in
220-GHz SB-TWT. The results of the model predictions and the FW circuit, in which only the longitudinal components
those obtained from CST 3-D simulations are compared and of the RF field exists in the interaction gap. With respect
analyzed in detail. √ to
the definition of the power, f n (0) is initialized to be Pin ,
thus Erf,z (x) = ez (x) can be obtained from (1). Considering
II. G ENERAL F ORMULA the periodicity of the structure, ez (x) can be expanded further
A. RF Circuit Fields with a Fourier series as [18]

Fig. 2 shows the sketch of the SB-FW-SWS. The axial ez (x, y, z) = ez,m (x, y) exp(− jβm z) (4)
length of one interaction period is p. The cross-sectional m
dimensions are a and b, respectively. a1 and b1 represent the whereβ0 represents the phase constant of the fundamental
broad side and narrow side of the beam tunnel, while a2 and b2 space-harmonic wave and βm = β0 + (2mπ/ p) is the phase
denote the transverse dimensions of the electron beam, and h constant of the mth harmonic wave.
LU et al.: 3-D NONLINEAR THEORY FOR SB FW TWT
Fig. 3. Longitudinal component of the RF-field distribution along the
y-axis in the interaction gap.
Without considering the effect of the beam tunnel, ez (x)
along the x-axis exhibits a cosine distribution. Considering the
effect of the beam tunnel, there is a depression in the center
of the ez (x) function [19]. To find an appropriate expression
for the description of ez (x) on the y-axis, the ez (x) in the
y-direction on different planes were calculated with CST and
the results are shown in Fig. 3.
In order to reflect the effect of the beam tunnel, (4) is
expanded as

ez (x, y, z) = Cm [cos(K x x) + cosh(ξx x)] cosh(K y y)
m
· exp(− jβm z)ẑ (5)
with
Cm
[ξz sinh(ξz b/2) cos(βm b/2)+βm cosh(ξz b/2) sin(βm b/2)]
=       code with the CST simulation. Once the empirical values of the
βm2 +ξz2 cos K x a21 +cosh ξx a21 cosh K y b21
2E 0
·
p cosh(ξz b/2)
where E 0 is the amplitude of the RF field at the beginning.
ξz has to be chosen such that at x = 0, y = 0, the field E rf,z
approximates the actual field obtained by the 3-D electromag-
netic solver.ξx is the field factor which is determined from the
actual field calculated with the CST code, at the y = 0 and
z = 0 position. K x = π/a is the phase constant of the wave
in the x-direction. K y = (βm2 − (ω/c)2 − K x2 )1/2 denotes the
phase constant in the y-direction.
The phase constant βm can be obtained by a modified
simple theory in which the effect of the beam tunnel is
ignored. The dispersion properties predicted by the simple
theory become inaccurate as the beam tunnel expands [20].
The inexact knowledge of the dispersion properties has a
profound impact on the predicted output power. To solve this
problem, the simple theory was modified by a correction factor
1 (a1 , b1 ) which was added to the phase velocity
2π f
β0 = . (6)
v p + 1(a1 , b1 )
To determine the correction factor, a Taylor expansion for
1(a1 , b1 ) in second order was used, where the coefficients are
5105
Fig. 4. Calculated (a) dispersion curve and (b) interaction impedance.
Red lines: results obtained with CSTMWS. Black lines: values coming
from the SB-FWTWT-3-D code.
determined by comparing the output of the SB-FWTWT-3-D
coefficients are determined, the dispersion data can be obtained
directly from the modified simple theory equation.
Fig. 4(a) shows the dispersion curve for the fundamen-
tal TE10 mode, comparing the SB-FWTWT-3-D code with
CST-Microwave Studio (MWS). As it can be seen in Fig. 4(a),
with the modified simple theory, a better agreement can be
achieved compared to the original one. Fig. 4(b) presents the
interaction impedance as a function of the frequency, where
the results from our theory and CST MWS are compared.
The beam–wave interaction efficiency can be described by the
interaction impedance, which is defined as [21]
−→
| E m |2
Rc = (7)
2βm2 Pin
where E m is the amplitude of the selected mth space harmonic.
By applying the original simple theory, the calculated results
agree less well with those from CST, but a good coincidence
can still be achieved.
Fig. 5(a) shows the amplitude of the longitudinal electric
field Erf,z in the x-, y-, and z-directions within one period.
By comparing the results obtained from the SB-FWTWT-3-D
code using the dispersion data from the modified simple theory
and CST simulation, it can be seen that the calculated data
agree very well. Fig. 5(b) presents the comparison of the
5106 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 65, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2018

Fig. 6. Distribution of the SC potential on the cross section (z = 0)

and the distribution of the transversal SC field (Ey and Ex ) along the
corresponding axis.

from Fig. 6(a). Fig. 6(b) represents the transverse SC fields

Ex and Ey, varying along the x-axis and y-axis, respectively.
It can be seen that the two curves are central symmetric and
the amplitude of the electric field near x = 0 and y = 0 is 0,
which is consistent with Fig. 6(a).
The ac SC fields Eac ac
z,m and Ez,m are the solutions of the
Helmholtz equation which can be written as
 2 2 2
 ac
∇⊥ + km − k z,m E z,m = j η(−km Jz,m + k z,m cρm )
 2 2 2
 ac 
∇⊥ + km − k z,m Hz,m = ∇⊥ · z × J⊥,m (9)

where c = 1/(µ0 ε0 )1/2 and η = (µ0 /ε0 )1/2 denote the speed
of light and wave impedance in free space, respectively. ∇⊥ =
(∂/∂ x, ∂/∂y). km = mw/c, k z,m = mw/v z0 are the phase
constant and its longitudinal component of the mth spatial
harmonic wave, respectively. ρm and J⊥,m represent the charge
density and current density corresponding to the mth harmonic
wave, which can be obtained by a Fourier expansion [22], [23].
Fig. 5. Comparison of the longitudinal component of RF field obtained
from the analytical model and the CST simulation, where the amplitude
C. Equations of the Electron Motion
of the electrical field is calculated in (a) each direction for one period and The equations of the electron motion can be computed by
(b) longitudinal direction for multiple periods.
using the relativistic Lorentz equation. For the kth particle,
we get
calculated E z along the z-direction. On the whole, the agree-
ment between CST and the SB-FWTWT-3-D code is good. d Pk qk  rf  rf 
Due to the inexact calculation of the phase constant, there = E k + E sc sc eternal
k + vk × Bk + Bk + Bk
dz v z,k
is small difference between the CST simulation and the (10)
SB-FWTWT-3-D model. A more accurate prediction can be
achieved by using the modified simple theory. where E rf rf sc sc
k , Bk is the electromagnetic field, while E k , Bk is
the field introduced by the SC. Bketernal represents the external
B. Space Charge Fields magnetic field acting on the particles. Other relevant differen-
At the beginning of the beam–wave interaction process, tial equations concerning the relativistic factor γ , the phase of
the electron beam gets bunched and excites the ac SC field. particle ψk and the transverse position x⊥ are given by
Rich harmonic contents exist in the bunched electron beam.
dγk qk pk Ek
A proper method should be taken to calculate the SC field. = (11)
The SC field consists of the dc SC field Edc dz m 0 c2 pz,k
z and the ac field
Eac . Edc can be easily obtained from the Poisson equation d 1 1
z,m z ψk (z) = ω − (12)
dz v z0 v z,k
∂ 2ϕ ∂ 2ϕ ρ dx⊥,k p⊥,k
+ =− (8) = (13)
∂x2 ∂y 2 ε0 dz pz
where ϕ is the SC potential, ρ is the charge density, and ε0 is
where pk is the electron momentum.
the dielectric factor in free space.
Fig. 6 shows the distribution of the dc SC field in the
interaction gap of the SB-TWT. As a result of introducing an D. Initial Conditions
SB, the SC equipotential line on the cross section (at z = 0) According to the definition of the wave power, the equation
consists of a series of concentric ellipses, which can be seen pn (z) = f n2 (z) can be established. The initial value of the
LU et al.: 3-D NONLINEAR THEORY FOR SB FW TWT
TABLE I
S TRUCTURE PARAMETER OF THE SB-TWT
normalized amplitude of the RF field can be defined with the
input power Pin
f n (0) = Pin . (14)
The initial velocity v 0 of the electron is determined by
the input driving voltage, while the value of the relativistic
factor is given by γ0 = 1/(1 − (v 0 /c)2 )1/2 . At the beginning
of the beam–wave interaction process, the electron phase is
homogenously distributed from 0 to 2π; hence, the initial
emission time t is distributed from 0 to T with a step length
of T /(Nz − 1), where T = 1/ f and Nz is the number of
electrons in longitudinal direction uniformly distributed within
a wavelength.
Let us suppose that only the eigenmode TE10 propagates
in the FW, then the frequency number in the expansion of
the electromagnetic fields is 1. To study the beam–wave
interaction, we consider the ideal case where the attenuation
due to the nonperfect conductor is ignored. To obtain the ac SC
field, the Helmholtz equation is solved by using a PIC type
of charge and current distribution algorithm with boundary
conditions E zac = 0 and ∂ Hzac /∂⊥ = 0 on the wall of the beam
tunnel. The number of harmonic waves used in computing the
SC field is not so large because convergence is achieved at a
certain wavenumber. To integrate all the differential equations
earlier, Fourth-order Runge–Kutta technique is adopted to
solve the equations for the field amplitudes and the Lorentz
force equations analytically.
III. M ODEL VALIDATION
To investigate the amplification performance of the SB-FW-
TWT with our method described in Section II, the calculation
sequence is as follows: first, the initial conditions for the
electron beam and the size of the grids have to be defined.
Then, the SC field and the electromagnetic field have to be
calculated and allocated to each grid point. Next, the fourth
Runge–Kutta method is used to solve the electron motion
equations to obtain the updated position information. This
procedure is repeated until the endpoint of the structure is
reached.
An FW-TWT with an SB tunnel operating at 220 GHz
was chosen to validate our model. A 3-D PIC simulation
software named CST was used to optimize the structure and
make a proper comparison with the model. The configuration
parameters of the SB-TWT are shown in Table I.
5107
Fig. 7. Calculated output power of the SB-TWT as a function of time
at 220 GHz simulated with the CST code. Also, a comparison between
forward wave and backward wave is given.
Fig. 8. Transverse orbits of the electron beam at different axial
positions (z = 0 mm, z = 12 mm, and z = 24 mm) in the beam tunnel
with the number of full period selected to be 50. For the magnetic guiding
field, a value of B = 1 T was chosen. The electron beam current was set
to I = 120 mA.
Fig. 7 shows the output power as a function of time. It can
be seen that after about 2 ns, a steady state can be achieved.
Comparisons between the forward wave and backward wave
were conducted based on the same SB-TWT structure. It can
be seen that the power of the backward wave is much lower
than that of forward wave and, thus, has a weak effect on
the final results; therefore, only the forward waves were
considered in our theory code.
In the SB-FWTWT-3-D code, the electrons initially distrib-
uted over a wavelength were observed. To achieve a higher
accuracy and shorten the running time of the model, the total
number of electrons at the beginning is chosen to be Nx ×
N y × Nz = 20 × 10 × 20 which are all distributed uniformly
over the lengths on the corresponding axis. The cross section
of the SB tunnel is divided into Mx × M y = 20 × 10 uniform
sheet cells. In a single period, the iteration step is selected to
be 5. To calculate the output power with our SB-FWTWT-3-D
code, five harmonic waves are considered.
Under the SC field in the electron beam and the magnetic
guiding field, the velocity shear effect will occur, leading to
a rotation of the whole electron beam. To observe such a
phenomenon with the SB-FWTWT-3-D model, the number
of full period was selected to be 50, resulting in a total
interaction length L = 24.36 mm. The electron orbits at
different longitudinal positions in the beam tunnel (z = 0 mm,
z = 12 mm, z = 24 mm) were observed as shown in Fig. 8.
One can see a rotation of the whole electron beam around the
longitudinal axis, with no particles touching the metal wall of
the beam tunnel.
5108
Fig. 9. Electron orbits on the horizontal plane (xz ) (left). Particle
trajectories on the vertical plane (yz ) (right).
Fig. 10. (a) Particle phase and (b) electron normalized velocity (vnorm =
v/c) as a function of the axial position.
Fig. 9 shows the evolution of the electron orbits on the
horizontal plane (xz) and vertical plane (yz), respectively. At
around z = 10 mm, the initially almost parallel electron orbits
get some spread angle, because after z = 10 mm, the beam–
wave interaction becomes stronger. The transverse velocities
of all the electrons are very small, similar to those at the
beginning, leading to an ignorable expansion of the electron
beam in the transverse directions. Under the effect of the SC
field and the magnetic guiding field, the whole electron beam
starts to rotate with a certain angular velocity. The Lorenz
force given by the angular velocity and the magnetic guiding
field acts on the individual electron, pointing to the center of
the electron beam, which prohibits the growth of the transverse
electron beam size. The electron energy is transferred from
the electron beam to the wave, thus a deceleration of the mean
electron velocity can be seen.
Fig. 10(a) shows the particle phase as a function of the
axial position. It shows the modulation of the electron beam
and the evolution of the electron bunches. As it can be seen,
the particle phases are kept almost constant when z < 10 mm.
At around z = 15 mm, the electron beam starts to bunch,
which means the beam–wave interaction becomes quite strong.
Fig. 10 (b) shows the normalized velocity (v norm = v/c) of
the electrons as a function of the axial position. In Fig. 10,
the mean electron velocity is marked as a black line. At around
z = 15 mm, the whole electron beam starts to decelerate,
recognizable on the decrease of the mean electron velocity.
In the region where a significant loss of the average elec-
tron velocity is visible, the beam–wave interaction becomes
stronger, resulting in a clear increase of the wave power.
A comprehensive comparison between the analytical results
from the SB-FWTWT-3-D code and CST simulation is pre-
sented in the following content. A model based on the para-
meters shown in Table I was simulated with the CST code.
The number of full periods was set to be N = 45.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 65, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2018
Fig. 11. Comparison of the output power and gain as a function of
the frequency, computed with the SB-FWTWT-3-D code and the CST
simulation. The input power was set to Pin = 47 mW.
Fig. 12. Comparison of the output power and gain as a function of
the input power, computed with the SB-FWTWT-3-D code and the CST
simulation. The frequency was set to f = 220 GHz.
In Fig. 11, a comparison of the output power versus
frequency between the SB-FWTWT-3-D code and the CST
program is shown. In both the codes, the output power
achieved the maximum value at a frequency of 235 GHz.
However, due to the prediction error of the dispersion and
the RF field, our model presents quite higher values of the
power compared to the CST code in the frequency range
of 225–240 GHz. By comparing the gain over the same
frequency range, the calculated values from SB-FWTWT-3-D
code and CST simulation are in good agreement.
Fig. 12 illustrates the output power as a function of the
input power. The two curves coincide well with each other
in the gain prediction for different values of the input power.
A comparison of the output power shows that the values from
the SB-FWTWT-3-D code are a quite higher than the values
of the CST simulation, resulting in a higher predicted output
power when the input power is larger than 70 mW. In both
modes, a saturated output power is achieved almost at the same
input drive power of about 140 mW.
Furthermore, the output power for different beam tun-
nel sizes was calculated to validate our model. The results
obtained with the SB-FWTWT-3-D code and the CST
LU et al.: 3-D NONLINEAR THEORY FOR SB FW TWT
Fig. 13. Calculated output power as a function of the frequency,
comparing the SB-FWTWT-3-D code and the CST simulation, for different
sizes of the beam tunnel where the ratio a2 /a1 = 0.85 and b2 /b1 = 0.64
is kept constant. The input power was set to Pin = 47 mW.
TABLE II
C OMPUTING T IME C OMPARISON
simulation are shown in Fig. 13. The overall agreement is
good. A better agreement can be obtained when the beam
tunnel size is smaller because a smaller beam tunnel has
an ignorable effect on the dispersion properties. Without
having the error in the dispersion calculation, the total error
drops rapidly. The accuracy of our model is reduced if the
beam tunnel becomes bigger. However, the accuracy of the
calculation is still not bad and acceptable.
Table II presents a comparison of the computing time
between SB-FWTWT-3-D and CST. The hexahedral legacy
method in Particle Studio of CST is used, which generates
320 112 cells. The total number of particles at the emission
surface of the cathode is chosen to be 140. The computing
time of CST is about 31 h for a single frequency with 10-ns
calculation. With the same testing computer, the calculation
procedure for a single frequency of SB-FWTWT-3-D is about
12 min, which is significantly shorter than that of CST.
IV. C ONCLUSION
A 3-D nonlinear theory for modeling the FW-TWT struc-
tures with sheet electron beams is developed in this paper and
implemented in our SB-FWTWT-3-D code. Instead of export-
ing the field data obtained from a 3-D simulation software,
the electromagnetic field in the gap is described by formulas.
A modified method was proposed to improve the prediction
accuracy of the dispersion and interaction impedance. The
nonlinear analysis for the loss-free SB-TWT structure is done
to investigate the performance of the SB-FW-TWT. Compre-
hensive comparisons between the new SB-FWTWT-3-D code
and the CST simulations are conducted to our code. It was
shown that our model used in the SB-FWTWT-3-D code is in
very good agreement with the results obtained from the 3-D
particle in cell simulation code CST.
5109
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Fengying Lu was born in Shandong, China, in

1990. She received the B.S. degree from Sichuan
University, Chengdu, China, in 2013. She is cur-
rently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the Institute
of Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Beijing, China.
From 2015 to 2016, she was as a Visiting
Scholar with the Max Planck Institute of Nuclear
Physics, Heidelberg, Germany.

Manfred Grieser was born in Heidelberg, Ger-
many, in 1957. He received the Diploma and the
Ph.D. degrees in physics from Ruprecht Karls
University, Heidelberg, Germany, in 1984 and
1986, respectively.
Since 1993, he has been a Permanent Sci-
entific Staff with the Max Planck Institute for
Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg, Germany. His cur-
rent research interests include general accelera-
tor physics.
Yong Wang was born in Hunan, China, in 1964.
He received the M.S. degree in electron physics
and devices from the Institute of Electronics,
Chinese Academy of Sciences (IECAS), Beijing,
China, in 1989.
In 1995, he joined IECAS, where he became
a Research Professor in 2001. His current
research interests include high-power klystron
and computational electromagnetics.