The cavity magnetron is a high-power vacuum tube used in early radar systems and subsequently in microwave ovens and in linear particle accelerators. A cavity magnetron generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field, while moving past a series of cavity resonators, which are small, open cavities in a metal block. Electrons pass by the cavities and cause microwaves to oscillate within, similar to the functioning of a whistle producing a tone when excited by an air stream blown past its opening. The resonant frequency of the arrangement is determined by the cavities' physical dimensions. Unlike other vacuum tubes, such as a klystron or a traveling-wave tube (TWT), the magnetron cannot function as an amplifier for increasing the intensity of an applied microwave signal; the magnetron serves solely as an electronic oscillator generating a microwave signal from direct current electricity supplied to the vacuum tube.
Plasma cosmology is a non-standard cosmology whose central postulate is that the dynamics of ionized gases and plasmas play important, if not dominant, roles in the physics of the universe at interstellar and intergalactic scales. In contrast, the current observations and models of cosmologists and astrophysicists explain the formation, development, and evolution of large-scale structures as dominated by gravity.
Wireless power transfer (WPT), wireless power transmission, wireless energy transmission (WET), or electromagnetic power transfer is the transmission of electrical energy without wires as a physical link. In a wireless power transmission system, an electrically powered transmitter device generates a time-varying electromagnetic field that transmits power across space to a receiver device; the receiver device extracts power from the field and supplies it to an electrical load. The technology of wireless power transmission can eliminate the use of the wires and batteries, thereby increasing the mobility, convenience, and safety of an electronic device for all users. Wireless power transfer is useful to power electrical devices where interconnecting wires are inconvenient, hazardous, or are not possible.
A gyrotron is a class of high-power linear-beam vacuum tubes that generates millimeter-wave electromagnetic waves by the cyclotron resonance of electrons in a strong magnetic field. Output frequencies range from about 20 to 527 GHz, covering wavelengths from microwave to the edge of the terahertz gap. Typical output powers range from tens of kilowatts to 1–2 megawatts. Gyrotrons can be designed for pulsed or continuous operation. The gyrotron was invented by Soviet scientists at NIRFI, based in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.
The static induction thyristor is a thyristor with a buried gate structure in which the gate electrodes are placed in n-base region. Since they are normally on-state, gate electrodes must be negatively or anode biased to hold off-state. It has low noise, low distortion, high audio frequency power capability. The turn-on and turn-off times are very short, typically 0.25 microseconds.
The Trident Laser was a high power, sub-petawatt class, solid-state laser facility located at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, originally built in the late 1980s for Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research by KMS Fusion, founded by Kip Siegel, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it was later moved to Los Alamos in the early 1990s to be used in ICF and materials research. The Trident Laser has been decommissioned, with final experiments in 2017, and is now in storage at the University of Texas at Austin.
A vircator is a microwave generator that is capable of generating brief pulses of tunable, narrow band microwaves at very high power levels. Its application is mainly in the area of electronic warfare, by way of interfering with electronic equipment such as radars or radio equipment.
Mounir Laroussi is a Tunisian-American scientist. He is known for his work in plasma science, especially low temperature plasmas and their biomedical applications.
Anthony L. Peratt is an American physicist whose most notable achievements have been in plasma physics,plasma petroglyphs, nuclear fusion and the monitoring of nuclear weapons.
The GLAss Spherical Tokamak is a name given to a set of small spherical tokamaks located in Islamabad, Pakistan. They were developed by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) as part of the National Tokamak Fusion Program (NTFP) in 2008 and are primarily used for teaching and training purposes.
A reconfigurable antenna is an antenna capable of modifying its frequency and radiation properties dynamically, in a controlled and reversible manner. In order to provide a dynamic response, reconfigurable antennas integrate an inner mechanism that enable the intentional redistribution of the RF currents over the antenna surface and produce reversible modifications of its properties. Reconfigurable antennas differ from smart antennas because the reconfiguration mechanism lies inside the antenna, rather than in an external beamforming network. The reconfiguration capability of reconfigurable antennas is used to maximize the antenna performance in a changing scenario or to satisfy changing operating requirements.
Chandrashekhar "Chan" Janardan Joshi is an Indian–American experimental plasma physicist. He is known for his pioneering work in plasma-based particle acceleration techniques for which he won the 2006 James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics and the 2023 Hannes Alfvén Prize.
Richard J. Temkin is a plasma physicist and researcher on plasma-heating gyrotrons and other electromagnetic devices involving high-powered microwaves or terahertz radiation.
Phillip A. Sprangle is an American physicist who specializes in the applications of plasma physics. He is known for his work involving the propagation of high-intensity laser beams in the atmosphere, the interaction of ultra-short laser pulses from high-power lasers with matter, nonlinear optics and nonlinear plasma physics, free electron lasers, and lasers in particle acceleration.
Valery A. Godyak is a Russian-American physicist who specializes in plasma physics. As a scientist, he made fundamental contributions to the understanding of radio frequency (RF) induced discharges in plasmas as well as in associated nonlinear phenomena. As an industrial physicist, he developed induction lamps such as the Icetron-Endura RF lamp and received honors from companies such as Osram Sylvania and Siemens.
Keith Howard Burrell is an American plasma physicist.
Victor Malka is a French plasma physicist and a pioneer in laser plasma acceleration. In 2004, Malka demonstrated that high energy monoenergetic electron beams could be generated using the technique of laser wakefield acceleration, and subsequently used them to develop compact X-ray and gamma radiation sources with applications in medicine, security technology and phase-contrast imaging. For these contributions to the field, he was awarded the IEEE Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Award in 2007, the Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics in 2017, and the Hannes Alfvén Prize in 2019.
Solar radio emission refers to radio waves that are naturally produced by the Sun, primarily from the lower and upper layers of the atmosphere called the chromosphere and corona, respectively. The Sun produces radio emissions through four known mechanisms, each of which operates primarily by converting the energy of moving electrons into electromagnetic radiation. The four emission mechanisms are thermal bremsstrahlung (braking) emission, gyromagnetic emission, plasma emission, and electron-cyclotron maser emission. The first two are incoherent mechanisms, which means that they are the summation of radiation generated independently by many individual particles. These mechanisms are primarily responsible for the persistent "background" emissions that slowly vary as structures in the atmosphere evolve. The latter two processes are coherent mechanisms, which refers to special cases where radiation is efficiently produced at a particular set of frequencies. Coherent mechanisms can produce much larger brightness temperatures (intensities) and are primarily responsible for the intense spikes of radiation called solar radio bursts, which are byproducts of the same processes that lead to other forms of solar activity like solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
Edl Schamiloglu is an American physicist, electrical engineer, pulsed power expert, inventor, and distinguished professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of New Mexico. He has been known in public media for his expertise in the design and operation of directed-energy weapons. He is also known for his assessment on the possible origins of alleged health damages presumably caused on U.S. embassy personnel in Cuba in 2016 as part of the Havana syndrome incident. He is the associate dean for research and innovation at the UNM School of Engineering, where he has been a faculty since 1988, and where he is also special assistant to the provost for laboratory relations. He is also the founding director of the recently launched UNM Directed Energy Center. Schamiloglu is a book author and co-editor, and has received numerous awards for his academic achievements. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Physical Society.
