The Design of a 2 TW Pulsed Power Research Facility

Physics International (PI) has designed a modular pulse generator for research in high-power switching, pulse compression, power flow, magnetic insulation, and dielectric breakdown. The generator is one wedge-shaped 1/20th "slice" of PI's conceptual design for a 40-50 TW, radial, tri-disk accelerator designed to drive imploded plasma or particle beam loads. The nominal design goal of the "slice" (or module) is to produce a 100 ns, 2 TW, 2 MV, 1 MA pulse into a resistive load, or a 150 to 200 ns pulse at lower power. The module consists of an 0.8 MJ Marx generator and four water-dielectric triplates with adjustable impedances. The first is a gas-switched transfer capacitor. Next are two water-switched pulse-compression stages, and last, an output line converging to a racetrack insulator. This article describes the design and planned experiments.