1.0 THz Backward-Wave Oscillator Based on Novel Helical Groove Rectangular Waveguide

A novel helical groove rectangular waveguide slow wave structure (HGRW-SWS) is put forward to develop the lower operating voltage and high electron efficiency terahertz backward wave oscillator (BWO). The major advantage of the HGRW structure is its higher interaction impedance, lower ohm loss and lower operating voltage with respect to the typical SWSs such as folded waveguide SWS or double staggered grating SWS especially in the case of higher spatial harmonics. It is found that this kind of SWS can be operating on the n=-2 harmonic with the interaction impedance of more than 1.5 ohms from the analysis of the cold characteristics of the HGRW-SWS. Moreover, the beam-wave interaction results indicate that the BWO based on the HGRW SWS can produce the output power exceeding 0.657 W in the frequency range from 0.894 THz to 1.164 THz.