Modeling Magnetically Insulated Power Flow In Mercury

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-HELIA[1] at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe in Germany but now, with some minor modifications[2], will be sited at NRL. Mercury can be operated in either positive or negative polarity[2-4]. 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 theory[5-8]. 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.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2003
Accession Number
ADA634504

Entities

People

  • Joseph W. Schumer
  • Paul F. Ottinger
  • Raymond J. Allen
  • Robert J. Commisso

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Charge Density
  • Couplings
  • Electric Fields
  • Electromagnetic Fields
  • Electron Emission
  • Electrons
  • Emission
  • Geometry
  • Photoexcitation
  • Polarity
  • Pulsed Power
  • Space Charge
  • Transmission Lines

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Plasma Physics / Magnetohydrodynamics

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics