Nonlinear theory of gyrotwystrons with stagger-tuned cavities

A nonlinear theory is developed to study the effects of stagger tuning on t he gain and the bandwidth of stagger-tuned gyrotwystrons operating in the l arge-signal regime. The assumption that prebunching cavities are short and therefore the electron bunching proceeds mainly in the drift regions allows us to use a simple point-gap model of the prebunching section to study thi s problem. Studies of gyrotwystrons with one- and: two-prebunching stagger- tuned cavities have been carried out in the large-signal, saturation regime and show that two-cavity gyrotwystrons are preferred over one-cavity gyrot wystrons for significantly larger gain, bandwidth ang gain-bandwidth produc t. The comparison of our results with a previous gyrotwystron design shows good agreement and validates our model.