Accession Number:
ADA634504
Title:
Modeling Magnetically Insulated Power Flow In Mercury
Descriptive Note:
Conference paper
Corporate Author:
NAVAL RESEARCH LAB WASHINGTON DC PLASMA PHYSICS DIV
Personal Author(s):
Report Date:
2003-06-01
Pagination or Media Count:
5.0
Abstract:
Mercury is a 50-ns, 6-MV, 360-kA accelerator with a magnetically-insulated, inductive-voltage-adder MIVA architecture. The machine was formerly known as KALIF-HELIA1 at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe in Germany but now, with some minor modifications2, will be sited at NRL. Mercury can be operated in either positive or negative polarity2-4. Voltage is added in vacuum along a magnetically insulated transmission line MITL from six voltage adder cells. Understanding power flow and coupling to a load in this geometry requires the application of MITL theory5-8. Because the electric field stresses on the cathode in the MITL exceed the vacuum explosive-emission threshold, electron emission occurs and current flow is divided between current flowing in the metal and in vacuum electron flow. This electron flow manifests itself as a loss current until the total current is large enough to magnetically insulate the emitted electrons from crossing the anode-cathode AK gap.
Descriptors:
Subject Categories:
- Electricity and Magnetism