Study of the hollow cathode plasma electron-gun

Summary form only given, as follows. For developing a novel high-current, long pulsewidths electron source, the theoretics and mechanism of the hollow cathode plasma electron-gun are analyzed in detail in this paper, the structure and the physical process of HCP E-gun are also studied. The gun overcomes the limitations of most high power microwave tubes, which employ either thermionic cathodes that produce low current-density beams because of the limitation of the space charge, or field emission cathodes that offer high current density but provide only short pulsewidths because of plasma closure of the accelerating gap. In the theories studying of HCP E-gun, the characteristic of the hollow cathode discharge is introduced, the action during the forming of plasma of the stimulating electrode and the modulating anode are discussed, movement of electrons and ions and the primary parameters are analyzed, and the formulas of the electric field, beam current density and the stabilization conditions of the beam current are also offered in this paper. The numerical simulation is carried out based on Poisson's equation, and the equations of current continuity and movement. Also, the optimized result is reported. On this base, we designed a hollow cathode plasma electron-gun, with output pulse current of 2 kA, and pulse width of 1 microsecond.