G. Dammertz

Development of a 140-GHz 1-MW continuous wave gyrotron for the W7-X stellarator

The development of high-power gyrotrons (118 GHz, 140 GHz) in continuous-wave (CW) operation for heating nuclear fusion plasmas has been in progress for several years in a joint collaboration between different European research institutes and industrial partners. The 140-GHz gyrotron being under development for the installation at the W7-X stellarator now under construction at the IPP Greifswald, Germany, operates in the TE/sub 28,8/ mode and is equipped with a diode type magnetron injection electron gun, an improved beam tunnel, a high mode-purity low-Ohmic loss cavity, an optimized nonlinear up-taper, a highly efficient internal quasi-optical mode converter, a single-stage depressed collector and an edge-cooled, single disk CVD-diamond window. RF measurements at pulse duration of a few milliseconds yielded an RF output power of 1.15 MW at a beam current of 40 A and a beam voltage of 84 kV. Depressed collector operation has been possible up to decelerating voltages of 33 kV without any reduction of the output power. Long pulse operation (10 s at 1 MW) was possible without any signs of a limitation caused by the tube. For this output power the efficiency of the tube could be increased from about 30% without to about 50% with depression voltage. The best performance reached so far has produced an energy per pulse as high as 90 MJ (power 0.64 MW, pulse length 140 s) which is the highest value achieved in gyrotrons operating at this frequency and power level. The pulse-length limitations so far are mainly due to the external system.

Coaxial cavity gyrotron- recent experimental results

The feasibility of fabrication of coaxial cavity gyrotrons with an output power up to 2 MW, continuous wave (CW) has been demonstrated and information necessary for a technical design has been obtained. Experiments with a gyrotron equipped with newly designed components-electron gun, cavity, RF output system-have been performed. In short pulses, a maximum radio frequency (RF) output power of 2.2 MW has been reached in stable operation. At the nominal output power of 1.5 MW an efficiency of 30% has been achieved. This has been enhanced to 48% in operation with a single-stage depressed collector. The stability of the coaxial insert has been measured to be within /spl plusmn/0.03 mm under operating conditions. The losses at the coaxial insert have been found to be about 0.1% of the RF output power. Investigations of the microwave stray radiation captured inside the tube have been performed with the following results: (1) the captured stray radiation due to diffraction losses is approximately uniformly distributed inside the mirror box; (2) about 8% of the captured microwave power is radiated through a relief window with 100-mm diameter in the used setup; and (3) the total amount of stray radiation has been found to be about 11% of the RF output power. Parasitic low-frequency oscillations have been successfully suppressed and stable operation has been achieved over a wide parameter range. Fast (/spl sim/0.1-ms) frequency tuning has been demonstrated by applying a rapid variable bias voltage at the coaxial insert. In particular, step frequency tuning by /spl plusmn/2.2 GHz due to switching from the nominal mode at 165 GHz to its azimuthal neighbors has been done and continuous tuning by up to 70 MHz within the bandwidth of the TE/sub 31,17/ mode has been performed.

CVD diamond windows studied with low- and high-power millimeter waves

As part of long-pulse high-power gyrotron development low- and high-power millimeter-wave characterization has been performed on bare and brazed chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond disks. The dielectric property measurements performed with low-power open resonator studies demonstrate the availability of large area CVD diamond disks fulfilling the requirements for high-power windows. In brazed components, additional surface losses are put to evidence. Their contribution to enhanced dielectric absorption differ characteristically between existing brazing techniques. A particular acid and hydroxide treatment for reducing the observed surface terms was studied for brazed windows at different stages of their integration into gyrotron tubes, such as premounting, onsite, and post-dismantling. Video inspections of the output and transmission windows in high-power tests gave evidence of stationary light emission phenomena from irregularly distributed spot-like centres in the output window. The absence of a similarly stationary phenomenon in all disks studied in transmission rules out typical defect structures such like nondiamond like phase inclusions or specifically terminated surface bonds as a critical source. Local temperature peaks and the presence of only singular light emission events in the transmission windows hint at contamination effects by particles which are only stationary in vacuum conditions.

Recent results of the 1-MW, 140-GHz, TE/sub 22,6/-mode gyrotron

The TE/sub 22,6/-mode gyrotron operated at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe at a frequency of 140 GHz has been investigated with respect to the behavior of different emitter materials, step tunability and reflections of the output beam. Two different materials of an emitter ring, LaB/sub 6/ and a coated dispenser cathode, were used to test the features of the gyrotron. The output power was found to be independent from the cathode material, as long as a new emitter ring was used. Aging of the emitter led to a slightly decreased output power. The gyrotron also was operated with a Brewster window. The broad-band characteristics of this window made it possible to measure the neighboring frequencies in a frequency range extending from 114 to 166 GHz. Only a slight dependence of the output power has been found over the whole frequency range. The Brewster window also allows us to investigate the influence of reflections on the output power. A strong decrease of the output power was found even for very small reflections. Tilting the power calorimeter (the reflections were measured to be less than 1%) increased the output power by about 20% to 1.6 MW at an efficiency of 36.2%. With a collector depression voltage of 35 kV for energy recovery, efficiencies of 60% at the above-mentioned output power were obtained.

165-GHz coaxial cavity gyrotron

The basic investigations on a coaxial cavity gyrotron operating at 165 GHz have been accomplished and the feasibility of manufacturing a 2-MW continuous-wave coaxial cavity gyrotron at 170 GHz has been demonstrated. In the last measurements, the data required for fabrication of an industrial tube have been completed. The influence of misalignment of the insert on gyrotron operation has been investigated. The limitation of the high-voltage performance of the electron gun due to buildup of a Penning discharge has been suppressed and the leakage current to the insert has been measured as a function of the retarding collector voltage.

Single-stage depressed collectors for gyrotrons

Two 140 GHz gyrotrons with a single-step depressed collector have been operated. The different position of the isolating collector gap in the stray magnetic field causes the electron motion in the retarding region to be in one case adiabatic and in the other case nonadiabatic. The kind of motion within the retarding field influences strongly the behavior of the gyrotron with a depressed collector. In the case of nonadiabatic motion a significant amount of transverse momentum is given to the electrons reflected at the collector potential. This causes the reflected electrons to be trapped between the magnetic mirror and the collector. The electrons escape from the trap by diffusion across the magnetic field to the body of the tube thus contributing to the body current. Despite the high body current there is no observable influence of the collector voltage on the RF output power. In the case of adiabatic motion the reflected electrons do not gain a sufficient amount of transverse momentum to be trapped by the magnetic mirror. They pass the cavity toward the gun and they are trapped between the negative gun potential and the collector. The interaction with the RF field by electrons traveling through the cavity enhances the diffusion in the velocity space thus enabling the trapped electrons to overcome the potential barrier and escape toward the collector. Therefore the body current stays at low values since in this case the reflected electrons do not contribute to it. However, at higher collector voltages a reduction of RF power occurred and some noise in the electron beam was observed.

D-band frequency step-tuning of A 1 MW gyrotron using a brewster output window

In order to demonstrate the usability of gyrotron oscillators as frequency step tunable high power millimeter-wave sources, experiments on a 1 MW, 140 GHz TE22,6 gyrotron with a built-in quasi-optical (q. o.) mode converter have been performed. By varying the operating parameters of the tube, a series of oscillations in the frequency range from 114 GHz to 166 GHz were excited. To avoid reflections, caused by the required vacuum barrier window, the gyrotron was equipped with a Brewster window. The achieved output power levels between 0.85 and 1.05 MW are compared to measurements carried out with the same tube using a conventional single-disk window. These experiments showed that even by using a q. o. mode converter, the influence of window reflections on the gyrotron oscillatory behavior cannot be removed completely.

High-power gyrotron development at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe for fusion applications

In the first part of this paper, the status of the 140-GHz continuously operated gyrotrons with an output power of 1 MW for the stellarator Wendelstein 7-X will be described. With the first series tube, an output power of 1000 kW has been achieved in short pulse operation (milliseconds) with an electron beam current of 40 A, and of 1150 kW at 50 A. With a pulse length of 3 min limited by the available high-voltage (HV) power supply, an output power of 920 kW at an electron beam current of about 40 A with an efficiency of 45% and a mode purity of 97.5% has been obtained. At a reduced beam current of 29 A, an output power of 570 kW was measured with a pulse length of 1893 s without significant increase in tube pressure. The energy content of this pulse is almost 1.1 GJ. For the next fusion plasma device, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), gyrotrons with a higher output power of about 2 MW are desirable. In short-pulse experiments, the feasibility of the fabrication of coaxial cavity gyrotrons with an output power up to 2-MW, continuous wave (CW), has been demonstrated, and the information necessary for a technical design has been obtained. The development of a long-pulse 2-MW coaxial cavity gyrotron started within a European cooperation. In parallel to the design and fabrication of an industrial prototype gyrotron, a short-pulse preprototype gyrotron has been operated to verify the design of critical components. An output power of 1.2 MW with an efficiency of 20% has been achieved. The development of frequency tunable gyrotrons operating in the range from 105 to 140 GHz for stabilization of current driven plasma instabilities in fusion plasma devices (neoclassical tearing modes) is another task in the development of gyrotrons at the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe.

Fast-frequency step-tunable high-power gyrotron with hybrid magnet system

Fast frequency-tunable gyrotrons are of interest for controlling instabilities in magnetically confined plasmas in large fusion reactors like e.g. ITER. The confining magnetic field depends on the radial position in tokamaks and stellarators. Hence, the electron cyclotron resonance interaction between the RF wave and the plasma electrons occurs only in a small plasma layer where the resonance condition is approximately fulfilled. Other plasma flux surfaces can be reached by a change of the gyrotron frequency or by mechanically steerable mirrors in the plasma vessel making use of the Doppler shift. Since it is difficult to find a material for such mirrors and since a reduction of the number of movable parts inside the plasma vessel is desired, it is obvious that the first solution is more advantageous. A 1 MW frequency-step-tunable gyrotron that operates between 114 and 166 GHz is under development at FZK. In a first step the frequency change has been performed by a slow variation of the magnetic field B by modification of the current in the superconducting (SC) coils. To prevent quenching of the SC solenoids, /spl part/B//spl part/t is limited to a maximum of /spl sim/0.1 Tesla/minute which results in a frequency change of /spl sim/42 MHz/s. To detect and suppress plasma instabilities in the ITER tokamak, the required frequency variation has been estimated to be of the order of seconds for several GHz. To fulfil these demands a hybrid magnet system including two normal conducting (NC) solenoids was build at FZK.

Possibilities for multifrequency operation of a gyrotron at FZK

We investigate the possibility of multifrequency operation of a 140-GHz gyrotron, which is designed to operate in the TE/sub 22,8/ mode at 140 GHz and the TE/sub 19,6/ mode at 111 GHz or the TE/sub 17,6/ mode at 105 GHz, for which existing equipment can be used. The present calculations compute beam properties for a given set of coil currents, accelerating voltage and current, and then use these beam properties to compute the output power and efficiency. These calculations are performed separately for each mode.