Plasma simulation to analyze velocity distribution characteristics of pseudospark-sourced electron beam

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/aba274

Abstract

Pseudospark-sourced electron beam is a promising candidate for driving vacuum electronic devices to generate millimeter wave and terahertz wave radiation as it has a very high combined beam current density. However, the inherent velocity spread of the beam, which is difficult to measure in experiment, has a great influence on the operating frequency and efficiency of the vacuum electronic device. In this paper, the velocity distribution characteristics of the electron beam produced by a single-gap hollow cathode electron gun are numerically studied and a three-dimensional kinetic plasma simulation model of a single-gap hollow cathode electron gun is built by using particle in cell and Monte Carlo collision methods in Vorpal. Based on the simulation model, the time-dependent evolution of the plasma formation inside the hollow cathode and electron beam generation process are observed. It is demonstrated that the pseudospark-sourced electron beam has a relatively large velocity spread. The time-dependent velocity distribution of the beam is analyzed, and the dependence of the beam velocity distribution under various operating conditions such as anode–cathode potential difference, gas pressure, and cathode aperture size are also studied.

Keywords: pseudospark hollow cathode vacuum electronic devices discharge

Received: 25 February 2020
Revised: 26 June 2020
Accepted manuscript online: 03 July 2020

PACS:	51.50.+v	(Electrical properties)
	29.25.-t	(Particle sources and targets)
	29.25.Bx	(Electron sources)

Corresponding Authors: ^†Corresponding author. E-mail: hailong703@163.com

About author:

†Corresponding author. E-mail: hailong703@163.com

* Project supported by the Sichuan Science and Technology Program, China (Grant No. 2019YJ0188) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61671116 and 11905026).

Cite this article:

Hai-Long Li(李海龙)†, Chen-Fei Hu(胡陈飞), Che Xu(徐彻), Yong Yin(殷勇), Bin Wang(王彬), Lin Meng(蒙林), and Mao-Yan Wang(王茂琰) Plasma simulation to analyze velocity distribution characteristics of pseudospark-sourced electron beam 2020 Chin. Phys. B 29 105101

Fig. 1.

2D schematic view of simulated structure.

Table 1.

Physical processes in simulation.

Fig. 2.

At cathode voltage −10 kV and gas pressure 30 Pa: (a) potential distribution at 11 ns, (b) seed electrons (green) and new electrons (blue) distribution at 11 ns, (c) potential distribution at 15 ns, and (d) seed electrons (green) and new electrons (blue) distribution at 15 ns.

Fig. 3.

Time-dependent properties of PS-sourced electron beam, showing (a) waveform of discharge current and beam current, (b) time-dependent axial mean velocity of electrons, (c) time-dependent radial mean velocity of electrons, and (d) electron beam velocity distributions at different moments.

Fig. 4.

Axial velocity-dependent electron density distributions of electron beam at (a) different gas pressures, (b) different cathode voltages, and (c) different cathode aperture sizes.

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Plasma simulation to analyze velocity distribution characteristics of pseudospark-sourced electron beam

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