PLASMA KINETIC ENERGY-RF CONVERSION.

This effort was part of a continuing program investigating nonelectri tube sources of electromagnetic energy. The particular interaction under investigation was cyclotron radiation from a magnetized plasma. Large amounts of relatively coherent X-band energy have been experimentally measured. A scheme using optical methods was developed to measure the spectrum of the radiation. Preliminary experiments indicate that this thoery can predict most of the output characteristics. The optimization of the interaction as to power density and coherency was begun. While this is not an established design technique, the results to date indicate that interactions can be developed utilizing this phenomena for use in RF generator design. Author