Work is underway to develop a 17 GHz free electron maser (FEM) for producing a 500 MW output pulse with a phase stability appropriate for linear collider applications. We plan to use a 500 keV, 5 kA, 6-cm-dia annular electron beam to excite a TM_(02) mode Raman FEM amplifier in a corrugated cylindrical waveguide. The annular beam will run close to the interaction device walls to reduce the power density in the fields, and to greatly reduce the kinetic energy loss caused by beam potential depression associated with the space charge which is a significant advantage in comparison with conventional solid beam microwave tubes at the same beam current. A key advantage of the annular beam is that the reduced plasma wave number can be tuned to achieve phase stability for an arbitrary correlation of interaction strength with beam velocity. It should be noted that this technique for improving phase stability of an FEM is not possible with a solid beam klystron. The annular beam FEM provides the opportunity to extend the output power of sources in the 17 GHz regime by well over an order of magnitude with enhanced phase stability. The design and experimental status are discussed.
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