Multipactor breakdown in microwave pulses

Journal article, 2013

A theoretical investigation is made of the effect of finite pulse length on the multipactor breakdown condition for microwave signals. The analysis considers the case of multipactor between two parallel metallic plates, using the classical resonance theory. It is found that decreasing pulse length tends to successively eliminate higher order resonance zones and lead to a 'pulse hardening' of lower order modes where the multipactor-prone resonance zones shrink and the lower boundary breakdown field of the zones smoothly increases as the pulse becomes shorter, eventually to completely eliminate the multipactor effect for sufficiently short pulses.