A novel all-metal metamaterial for constructing relativistic slow wave structure

In recent vacuum electronic devices, metamaterials have shown an obvious advantage of miniaturization. Due to increasing miniaturization demand, research of metamaterials in high-power microwave (HPM) field is now also a hotspot. For better applications of metamaterials, there are still two issues to be solved, the low space limit current of the structure and the low uniformity of the working electric field. To solve these problems, we construct a novel all-metal metamaterial structure by applying a 45° rotational arrangement in space and a four-support rod structure. This new metamaterial structure has a great uniformity of the axis electric field, and its electric field fluctuation is reduced from 8.6% to 2.8%. Based on this metamaterial structure, we proposed a novel relativistic slow wave structure, and its working mode has a negative dispersion characteristic. Using the method of expanding the electron beam channel, the space limit current of the relativistic slow wave structure is greatly improved to 12.3 kA, and the particle simulation method is used to prove the increase in the space limit current. In addition, it is found that this slow wave structure has higher coupling impedance, which provides a better working environment for an annular relativistic electron beam. Therefore, this metamaterial structure has great potential in the HPM field.