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0 pointscatalogia5y ago0 comments

> Scaling that up by 4 orders of magnitude would need a 10 MW RF source or amplifier. I'm pretty sure those don't exist and if they did they'd be very large and heavy.

Probably a dumb question, but it's it just a matter of more power and cooling for the magnetron? I'm thinking the size of the magnetron is determined by the wavelengths you're trying to produce. (I don't mean to diminish the challenge of applying this tech, a 10 MW power source would still be quite large for an airplane.)

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tgflynn5y ago

Yes, I think so. If the frequency is high enough so that it's not the limiting factor the size would mainly depend on how much power you can dissipate in a given volume.

The highest power RF amplifiers I've ever seen were the klystrons used for the LEP and ESRF accelerating cavities. Those were large in part because of the relatively low frequency of 350 MHz but I believe there was also a large water-cooled absorber that dissipated whatever power was left in the MW+ electron beam given the conversion efficiency.

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0 pointscatalogia5y ago0 comments

> Scaling that up by 4 orders of magnitude would need a 10 MW RF source or amplifier. I'm pretty sure those don't exist and if they did they'd be very large and heavy.

0 comments

tgflynn5y ago

Yes, I think so. If the frequency is high enough so that it's not the limiting factor the size would mainly depend on how much power you can dissipate in a given volume.

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