Generation of ultra-powerful microwave pulses in stretcher-amplifier-compressor systems.

We theoretically investigate the possibility of generating ultra-high-power ultrashort microwave pulses based on the Chirped-Pulse Amplification (CPA) method, which is widely used in laser physics. This method includes preliminary elongation of the initial pulse in a stretcher, sequential amplification of spectral components in a broadband amplifier, and compression in a line with negative dispersion (compressor). We consider the scheme in which waveguides with multi-fold helical corrugation are used as dispersing elements (stretcher and compressor), and a relativistic Cherenkov TWT or helical gyro-TWT is used as an amplifier. For the parameters of experimentally realized amplifiers in the 30 GHz range, we show that the peak pulse power in the stretcher-amplifier-compressor system significantly exceeds not only the saturation level of the amplifier, but also more than 4 times higher than the power of the used electron beam.