Vacuum inductive pulsed power compression for inertial confinement fusion

Light ion beam Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) requires a short (approx. 10 ns), high power (approx. 100 TW) ion beam to symmetrically irradiate a pellet. The United States light ion beam ICF program is centered at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) where two super power generators are located. The PBFA I generator(1), presently in operation, uses Marx and pulse-line technology to deliver hundreds of kilojoules of energy in a 40 to 50 ns pulse to an ion beam diode. This system consists of 36 smaller generators added in series and parallel combinations near the load. The next generation system, known as PBFA II, is presently under construction at SNL. This system will also be modular and will be capable of delivering megajoules of energy to a load. In order to take full advantage of the available energy from these generators, the effect of inter-module jitter must be minimized to symmetrize the power flow, and the pulse width narrowed to approx. 10 ns to attain some degree of power multiplication.