II.1 — Introduction to radio frequency engineering

RF engineering in particle accelerators is a multidisciplinary field that combines principles of electromagnetism, RF technology, control systems, and beam physics to ensure the efficient and reliable acceleration of charged particles for various scientific and industrial applications. The aim of this chapter is to review the electromagnetic field theory behind the practice discussed in the following RF engineering section. Starting from Maxwell’s equation in vacuum and their solution, we discuss the most commonly used boundary conditions. We review the general boundary value problem to show the properties of electromagnetic fields in cylindrical metallic waveguides. We discuss as well examples relevant for particle accelerator technology.