Pulse power for future X-ray simulators

Abstract

The simulator concepts studied were designed to yield 400 kJ of 13 keV KrK-shell radiation, which requires significantly more power and energy than today's systems. The object of the study was to identify technologies that lead to feasible designs, and to compare these designs, e.g. in their affordability. A single PRS ("monolithid') with a 250 ns implosion time was the primary object of study; a 100 ns implosion monolithic system and a system of four 250 ns modules were studied in less detail. The M-Q-K model developed by NRL and AASC was assumed to predict the radiation output of the PRS. A system analysis combined this model with a simplified circuit to optimize the PRS load and the key circuit components, which were an LC representation of the pulse-forming circuit, connecting transmission lines, and the vacuum region. Optimization suggested peak PRS currents of 42 MA and 52 MA for the 100 ns and 250 ns monolithic cases and 37 MA each for the four 250 ns PRS modules. It was shown that when driving 250 ns implosions the driver energy was least when the driver (LC)" time was 125 ns. For the 250 ns, 52 MA single PRS, four realizable and near-optimum point designs were identified. One uses 60 present-day [(LC)'" > 500 ns] Marxes and water transfer capacitors; another uses 96 faster [(LC)'" > 300 ns] Marxes + water peakingcapacitors; the third uses 256 still faster [(LC)'" = 175 ns] Marxes alone; the fourth uses 64 LTDs. The point designs are compared with each other and with the most similar previous technology, developed in US DoD in the 1970's and 1980's. Fast stage components are now under development to extend this technology to any of the latter three design approaches and possibly to the Z rehrbikhment at SNLA.

Shaping the output pulse of a linear-transformer-driver module

“…(1), (2), and (13), the peak power is maximized by the triggering sequence that satisfies Eq. (10). The discussion that follows extends that given in Appendix D of Ref.…”

“…Kim and colleagues consider instead an LTD module that drives an internal oil-insulated transmission line [9]; Corcoran, Smith, and co-workers [10,14] consider the use of an internal water-insulated line. Reference [37] is the first to propose that water-insulated LTD modules be used to drive next-generation pulsed-power accelerators.…”

100 GW linear transformer driver cavity: Design, simulations, and performance

“…The High Energy Density Physics (HEDP) community is proposing to build a next-generation pulsed-power accelerator with peak electrical output power in the range of 300 TW to 1,000 TW [1][2][3][4][5][6]. The prime power source of such a machine may consist of a system of linear transformer drivers (LTDs) [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] fast Marx generators (FMGs) [7,9,[19][20][21][22] or impedance-matched Marx generators (IMGs) [18,23,24]. The pulsed power community has been developing LTD technology for 20 years on various single-cavity experiments [16,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37], multicavity (single "module") experiments [14,27,32,35,[38][39]…”

Water-dielectric-breakdown relation for the design of large-area multimegavolt pulsed-power systems

“…Several applications (e.g., inertial confinement fusion, high-energy-density-physics studies, and equation-of-state research) have motivated the community to develop conceptual accelerator designs that could produce electrical powers as high as 1000 TW [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]; most of these designs also include waterinsulated components. Optimizing the calculated performance of such components for both terawatt-and petawattclass accelerators requires an estimate of the conditions under which the components are likely to suffer dielectric failure.…”