Efficient Method For Multipactor Modelling

B.Tech Project Report

Submitted By
Abhishek Anand
(Y9023)

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, KANPUR

CERTIFICATE

It is certified that the work contained in the Undergraduate Project

entilted Efficient Method For Multipactor Modelling by Abhishek Anand
has been carried out under my supervision and has not been produced
elsewhere for degree.

Dr. A R Harish

November 7, 2012

Department of Electrical Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

ABSTRACT

Multipactor discharges takes place at a resonant condition at which electrons impact

a surface in phase with an alternating electric field. The discharge is sustained by
electron multiplication from secondary emission. Multipactor discharges can
adversely affect many different rf systems in vacuum, and this project attempts to
provide a general understanding of multipaction and give promising results for
improved performance and reliability of these systems.
Aim of the project is to design a tool which can predict multipaction breakdown level
and susceptibility charts for a given geometry and surface of the system.
Using the parallel plate model, the multipaction in one dimension space is analysed.
Motion of the Particle under uniform electrical field in one dimension between parallel
plate is recorded and under appropriate condition multipaction breakdown level is
calculated and multipaction susceptibility chart has been plotted and results are
compared with the standard graph for the same.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I want to thank my B.Tech Project Guide Dr. A R Harish for giving me this
opportunity to work under his esteem guidance. I would like to thank him for his
continuous support and encouragement throughout the project.

Abhishek Anand

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Multipactor Discharge
Mechanism

Multipaction Modelling Method.

Results10

Conclusions 12

Future Work..12

References13

1. INTRODUCTION
Multipactor Discharge
The multipactor discharge occurs when electrons are accelerated by radio
frequency fields and the discharge is sustained in a vacuum, hence forming
an electron avalanche caused by secondary electron emission. Multipactor
discharges can occur in radio frequency or microwave systems in vacuum
conditions, as the electrons of this discharge impact the surfaces in phase with the
alternating field. The impact of an electron to a surface, depending on its energy and
angle releases one or more secondary electrons into the vacuum.
These electrons can then be accelerated by the RF fields and can impact the same
or another surface. If the impact energies, number of electrons released and timing
of the impacts is such that a sustained multiplication of the number of electrons
occurs, the phenomenon can grow exponentially and may lead to operational
problems of the RF system such as damage of RF components or loss/distortion of
the RF signal. Another concern is heating, which is a result of the power dissipated
to the device walls as the multipacting electrons strike the walls. The discharge can
also cause direct physical damage to the component with the risk of permanently
changing the electric properties of the device.
There are several scientific and engineering applications, such as rf satellite
payloads, particle accelerators, and rf fusion experiments, which utilize rf power at
these frequencies and vacuum pressures, and as a result, they are often affected by
these discharges. In addition, these rf applications often involve metal and dielectric
materials with suffciently high secondary electron emission to support multipactor
discharges.

Mechanism
There are two main kinds of multipactor, the single-surface and the double-surface
types. Single-surface multipactor can occur in structures with non-uniform field or
with crossed electric and magnetic fields, where the electron, accelerated by the
electric field, returns to the original surface due to the circular motion caused by the
magnetic field.
In this project, we will focus on double-surface or parallel plate multipactor however
the models developed are general and can predict single side multipaction
breakdown levels as well.
A multipactor discharge starts when a free electron inside a microwave device is
accelerated by an electric field. In a strong field the electron will quickly reach a high
velocity and upon impact with one of the device walls, secondary electrons may be
emitted from the wall. If
the field direction reverses at this moment, the newly emitted electrons will start
accelerating towards the opposite wall and, when colliding with this wall, knock out
additional electrons. As this procedure is repeated, the electron density grows
quickly and within fractions of a microsecond a fully developed multipactor discharge
is obtained (fig. 1.1).
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from [14]

Fig 1.1, Initial stage of parallel plate multipactor, where a free electron is accelerated by the
electric field and is forced into one of the plates, causing emission of secondary electrons.
wth every half cycle, no. of electrons multiplies hence causing multipaction.

To maintain the resonant electron emission shown in the figure 1.1 the electric field
applied must be appropriate for a given frequency and geometry. If the rf electric
field is too high for a given frequency and plate spacing, the initial electron will
impact too early, the secondary electrons will be emitted against the electric field,
and they will not be able to accelerate back across the gap. Conversely, if the
electric field is too low, the electron may impact with insufficient energy for
secondary electron emission.
The impacted surfaces must allow for a gain in the number of electrons by
secondary emission i.e. the secondary electron yield should be greater than one.
Also, it is necessary for this discharge to occur under vacuum pressures as frequent
collisions with background gas can prevent the necessary resonant electron motion.
When the proper geometry, rf frequency, and voltages are combined in vacuum
with surfaces possessing the necessary secondary electron emission characteristics,
multipactor discharges can occur.
When an electron strikes a surface, depending on the energy of impact, the angle of
impact and the surface property it can result in the emission of further electrons. The
emitted electron is referred to as secondary. Collision can either be elastic or
inelastic. For analytical solutions there are two ways to proceed one is by taking
constant velocity approach in which velocity of secondary electron is assumed to be
constant and equal to
(initial velocity). Another is in which we take the ration of
the impact velocity and the initial velocity to be constant. In this I have chosen the
former method for its simplicity while the other can also be employed very easily.

2. Multipaction Modelling Method

Motion of electron in vacuum under electric field can be studied with the help of
equation of motion,
2.1
m (= 9.11031 kg) and e (= 1.61019 C) are the mass and charge of the
electron, x the direction of motion, and E is the electric field.
For the multipaction to take place we need to apply alternating field , so for the case
of parallel plate model we assume
2.2
For the Secondary Electron Yield (SEY) to be greater the 1 the impact energy W
should lie in a range. The impact energy where the SEY reaches unity is called the
first cross over point and is denoted by , after that the yield increases and reaches
a maximum and then begins to decrease, the energy at which the yield drops below
unity again is called the second cross-over point, .

Hence, as energy

, we can find the range of impact velocity which is

2.3

In order to get theoretical solution, we can assume two plate multipaction for which
we can find out the required resonance condition for a given frequency and gap of
plate, corresponding phase requirement and the amplitude of the electric field.
This approach will give directly give us all the possible combinations of field
amplitude and frequency for which we will get multipaction.

(2.4) from [2]14

Where
is the field amplitude,
known as order of multipaction),

is the angular frequency, N is odd integer (also

is the initial velocity, is the phase given by

(2.5) from [2]14

is the first cross over velocity

The method used here is for a more general case which includes both the single
plate multipaction and double plate multipaction. In this, we vary both the field
amplitude and the frequency and verify each possible combination to see whether it
results in multipaction or not. In this we have not assumed any resonance condition
or phase focussing and have analysed all feasible value and hence covering both
single and double plate multipaction. In this we are trying to verify the analytically
obtained solutions previous method as the approach is more close to experiment
setup.
From the equation of motion we can say

( )

Or,
Or,

Where
So equation becomes

Integrating both side over

2.6

to

and

We get ,

2.7
Also, we know that
we get,

, putting this in eqn. 2.7 and integrating it for x over

Using the above found x and v we predict the trajectory of the electron and select
those values of field amplitude and frequencies for which the condition of equation
2.3 holds

Procedure used in the code to find the multipaction in one dimension space :

Inputs Required

1) Initial x and y coordinates of the particle

2) Length of the gap between the plates
3) First and second crossover energy (

4) Initial Velocity of the particle

Assume a range of voltage and frequency for which multipaction susceptibility

chart has to be plotted, frequency is usually between 1 to 100 GHz

Choose the value of maximum interval for which iteration has to be recorded
tmax and also the length of the smallest interval dt. tmax should be large for
high frequencies.

For every iteration calculate the new position and the velocity of the particle

Check whether the particle has reached any of the boundary

If it has reached the boundary (i.e. collision with the surface) then check
whether the velocity lies within the range of eqn. 2.3

Discard the particle if it fails to satisfy the condition in eqn 2.3 and if it does
than increase the collision count

After the collsion replace the particle with a secondary particle with velocity
equal to
and sign of direction opposite to the one before collision

For every combination of field amplitude and frequency check if the collision
count is more than 4 if it has than mark the pair in multipaction susceptibility
chart

Finally plot all the points and we will get the multipaction susceptibility chart

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3. Results:1) Plot of the multipacting particle (position vs time)

= 162500 v/m, f = 1 GHZ, gap = 1mm

fig 3.1

Here we can see the particle making a to and fro motion between the plates which is
approximately sinusoidal.

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2) Multipaction Susceptibility chart

fig 3.2

This results have been obtained at V = 10^v(i), where v = 1:0.05:3.8, f = -1:0.05:1

gap = 1mm
Theoritical Result

fig 3.3 from[14]

Multipactor susceptibility chart based on the constant initial velocity approach. Where, W0 = 3.68 eV,
W1 = 23 eV, W2 = 1000 eV

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4. Conclusions
From the results it is clear that results obtained from the simulation performed is
similar to the theoretically obtained one for N=1 that is for the first order multipaction.
A similarity can also be seen with N=2 chart but after results seem to differ
significantly.
One reason can be for higher order multipaction the time interval required is also
high and so are the frequency and the voltage applied.
Also the theoretical results only show double plate multipaction where as in the
method applied here both the type of multipaction takes place, which might explain
the odd multipacting points near 1 GHzmm and 1000 volts.

5. Future Aims
First and foremost to get rid of the discrepancies between the theoretical datas the
one I obtained for higher order of multipaction.
The approach here used is constant initial velocity approach, constant ratio velocity
approach can also be verified as it is more widely used method for high frequencies.
This result is for 1 dimension space it can be further extended to 2 dimensional and
3 dimensional space.
This method uses a parallel plate model, it can be replaced with a coaxial cable
model. Because of the small gap between the inner and outer circle a coaxial cable
can approximated as a parallel model with electric applied that of a coaxial cable and
motion of equation same as parallel plate.

13

References
1) Timothy P. Graves. Experimental Investigation of Electron Multipactor
Discharges at Very High Frequency 1 May 2006. Page 18
2) Richard Udiljak. Multipactor in Low Pressure Gas and in Nonuniform RF Field
Structures.Page 6-9
3) Aviviere Telang. Efficient Method for Geometry Independent Multipactor
Modelling page 13

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