A new design for 1-cm rutile traveling wave masers.

Kollberg and Lewin (1976) have reported a flange noise temperature of about 35 K for a 75-MHz-wide Ka-band maser. The present investigation is concerned with a maser design which can be considered as a further development of the Ka-band image-line maser employed by Kollberg and Lewin. The new design has two advantages over the image-line maser, including a much lower insertion loss (about 4 dB as compared to about 15 dB for the image-line maser over a length of 6 cm), and a more simplified manufacturing procedure. It is pointed out, that system performance should increase considerably in connection with the reduction of the insertion loss of the output waveguide. The maser system has recently been tested successfully in a 20-m, millimeter-wave telescope. Several new spectral lines could be found during the first test period.