Investigation on high inductive helical supported magnetically insulated transmission line on a 10-stage linear transformer driver system

• Main Authors: Wenkang Zou, Lin Chen, Dagang Liu, Le Zhang, Laqun Liu, Liangji Zhou, Meng Wang, Bing Wei, Fan Guo, Xueqiong Wang, Yingmin Dai, Weiping Xie, Jianjun Deng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society 2012-11-01
• Series: Physical Review Special Topics. Accelerators and Beams
• Online Access: http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTAB.15.110401

Magnetically insulated transmission lines (MITLs), which could transfer power density up to TW/cm^{2}, are one of the most important technologies in pulsed power. In pulsed power systems for the Z-pinch fusion or radiography, a long MITL acts as a transmission line as well as a spatial isolation between load and driver. The length of MITLs in such systems will be up to a few, even tens of meters. However, the anode and cathode (A-K) gap is only a few centimeters to make the centering of the MITL’s electrodes be one of the most challenging issues. Cathodes of long coaxial MITLs, such as that of Hermes-III and RITS, are fixed at the low voltage end while keeping the other end free of support. However, such a method will be very difficult for longer MITLs due to gravity and engineering reasons. An interesting question for such MITL design is to find a way to position the electrodes to the ideal position while hardly damaging the power flow. It is also a very practical concern in the construction of large pulsed-power facilities. In this paper, a high inductive helical supported MITL in a 10-stage linear transformer driver system is investigated. Both experiments and particle-in-cell simulations show that magnetic insulation is well established and power flow could be transmitted to load efficiently.