Generation of Multi-Gigawatt Picosecond Pulses by Magnetic Compression Lines

The possibility of creating solid-state picosecond generators with a peak power of tens of GW has been experimentally shown. In the approach, an input pulse of nanosecond duration from a solid-state generator with a semiconductor opening switch (SOS generator) is amplified in peak power and shortened in time by successive stages of gyromagnetic ferrite lines. The essence of the approach is that the lines in each stage operate in a magnetic compression mode (Magnetic Compression Line, MCL), which is realized at close values of the input pulse duration and the period of oscillations generated in the line. In this case, the main part of the input pulse energy is transmitted only to the first peak of the oscillations. In the experiments, we used the SOS generator and a four-stage magnetic compressor based on MCL1-MCL4 lines. At the peak power of input pulse of 6 GW (490 kV, $40\ \Omega$ and 7-ns pulse duration generated by the SOS generator, a peak power of 77 GW (1.93 MV, $48\ \Omega$ ) with 105-ps pulse duration was obtained at the output of the four-stage compressor. Compared with the parameters of the input pulse, the voltage rise rate was increased by ∼ 230 times to 26.2 MV/ns, and the power rise rate was increased by ∼ 820 times to 1.65 TW/ns.