Design and experimental results on a terawatt magnetically controlled plasma opening switch
- Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Primex Physics International, San Leandro, CA (United States)
The magnetically controlled plasma opening switch (MCPOS) is an advanced plasma opening switch that utilizes magnetic fields to improve operation. Magnetic fields always dominate terawatt, pulsed power plasma opening switches. For that reason, the MCPOS uses controlled applied magnetic fields with magnitude comparable to the self-magnetic field of the storage inductor. One applied field holds the plasma in place while energy accumulates in the storage inductor, then another applied field pushes the plasma away from the cathode to allow energy to flow downstream. Over a ten month period, an MCPOS was designed, built, and tested on DECADE Module 2 at Physics International. The peak drive current was 1.8 MA in 250 ns. The output parameters were up to 1 MA into an electron beam load. The radiation temporal pulse width averaged 60 nanoseconds full-width at half-maximum. The peak load voltage ranged from one to two megavolts. The experiments demonstrated efficient power flow through a long, low-impedance magnetically insulated transmission line between the magnetically controlled plasma opening switch and the load.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 658401
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-98-0704; ON: DE98005450; BR: DP0102011; TRN: AHC2DT06%%285
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: May 1998
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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