Design of a High-Order Mode Corrugated Slow Wave Structure With Large Beam Tunnel for Traveling Wave Tube

Qinwen Xue; Xuesong Yuan; Zhongtao Cui; Matthew Thomas Cole; Yanyu Wei; Yang Yan

doi:10.1109/TED.2025.3611910

Design of a High-Order Mode Corrugated Slow Wave Structure With Large Beam Tunnel for Traveling Wave Tube

Qinwen Xue, Xuesong Yuan, Zhongtao Cui, Matthew Thomas Cole, Yanyu Wei, Yang Yan

University of Electronic Science and Technology of China

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

In the millimeter wave and terahertz band, the size of vacuum electronic devices becomes small, typically close to the wavelength, which poses a great challenge to manufacturing and assembly. High-order mode operation allows for comparatively larger circuit dimensions at the expense of mode competition. Here, we report on the development of a corrugated slow wave structure (CSWS) that is placed outside the E -plane of the rectangular waveguide. The likely TM₁₁ mode is excited in the CSWS during TE₁₀ -mode excitation, and a high-order hybrid operating mode is achieved. The transmission characteristics of the fundamental mode and high-order hybrid mode in a high-frequency circuit are obtained simultaneously in this Ka-band experiment. As a result of the strong longitudinal electric field component of the hybrid mode in this CSWS, the radius of the beam tunnel can be increased by approximately 60%. Meanwhile, the mode competition can be effectively suppressed with the increase in the size of CSWS. A 1-THz traveling wave tube (TWT) operating near a phase of 505° is designed to compare with the size of the beam tunnel. The diameter of the beam tunnel can reach up to 0.1 mm. The simulation results show that the maximum output power is 1.12 W at 1028 GHz, and the -3-dB bandwidth (BW) is 7 GHz.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	6293-6299
Number of pages	7
Journal	IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices
Volume	72
Issue number	11
Early online date	25 Sept 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/TED.2025.3611910
Publication status	Published - 30 Nov 2025

Funding

Received 15 August 2025; revised 16 September 2025; accepted 16 September 2025. Date of publication 25 September 2025; date of current version 31 October 2025. This work was supported in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province under Grant 2024NSFSC0467 and in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61771096. The review of this article was arranged by Editor J. Feng. (Corresponding author: Xuesong Yuan.) Qinwen Xue, Xuesong Yuan, Zhongtao Cui, Yanyu Wei, and Yang Yan are with the Terahertz Science and Technology Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China (e-mail: [email protected]).

Funders	Funder number
Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province	2024NSFSC0467
National Natural Science Foundation of China	61771096

Keywords

High frequency
high-order mode
hybrid mode
larger beam tunnel
traveling wave tube (TWT)

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Access to Document

10.1109/TED.2025.3611910

IEEETElecDev_ColeAccepted author manuscript, 700 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "In the millimeter wave and terahertz band, the size of vacuum electronic devices becomes small, typically close to the wavelength, which poses a great challenge to manufacturing and assembly. High-order mode operation allows for comparatively larger circuit dimensions at the expense of mode competition. Here, we report on the development of a corrugated slow wave structure (CSWS) that is placed outside the E -plane of the rectangular waveguide. The likely TM11 mode is excited in the CSWS during TE10 -mode excitation, and a high-order hybrid operating mode is achieved. The transmission characteristics of the fundamental mode and high-order hybrid mode in a high-frequency circuit are obtained simultaneously in this Ka-band experiment. As a result of the strong longitudinal electric field component of the hybrid mode in this CSWS, the radius of the beam tunnel can be increased by approximately 60\%. Meanwhile, the mode competition can be effectively suppressed with the increase in the size of CSWS. A 1-THz traveling wave tube (TWT) operating near a phase of 505° is designed to compare with the size of the beam tunnel. The diameter of the beam tunnel can reach up to 0.1 mm. The simulation results show that the maximum output power is 1.12 W at 1028 GHz, and the -3-dB bandwidth (BW) is 7 GHz.",

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Design of a High-Order Mode Corrugated Slow Wave Structure With Large Beam Tunnel for Traveling Wave Tube

Abstract

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Keywords

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