A large sized synthetic diamond window assembly was installed on a 170 GHz
gyrotron. An aperture and a thickness of the window are 83 and 2.23 mm, res
pectively, whose edge was directly cooled by water. Gyrotron performances o
f 520 kW at 6.2 s and 450 kW at 8 s were attained. A temperature increase o
f the window stabilized after similar to 5 s, whereas the power had been li
mited to below 170 kW with conventional windows. This drastic improvement o
f a deliverable power was obtained from the outstanding properties of the d
iamond, that is, an extremely high thermal conductivity (similar to 1800 W/
mK) and a low value of loss tangent (tan delta<1.3 x 10(-4)). The gyrotron
was inspected after the similar to 1300 times operation at 520 kW (>1 s), b
ut no damage nor trouble was found both on the gyrotron and the diamond win
dow. These results give a prospect for a multimegawatt power output from th
e gyrotron, i.e., the diamond window gives a solution for the window proble
m which has been regarded as the most serious issue on the development of h
igh power long pulse gyrotron. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S00
34-6748(99)01201-0].