Component design, development, and testing of an inductive voltage adder (IVA) system for Jupiter
Jupiter is a proposed 15-20 MJ laboratory X-ray source. It would store /spl sim/100 MJ in the Marx generators and deliver /spl sim/500 TW to drive high power z-pinch implosions. The pulsed power requirements for Jupiter were evaluated by a national review panel which concluded that the modular IVA technology as used in HERMES III is capable of meeting these requirements. Modularity of construction permits design verification with less than a full size system and offers the flexibility to meet changing requirements. A program to validate this approach at the required power levels has begun with the construction and testing of components that will comprise a full scale IVA generator module. The IVA module will provide a nominal 10 MV, 1.8 MA, 100 ns FWHM output pulse and will consist of four submodules. Each submodule is composed of a Marx generator, two intermediate energy storage capacitors (ISCs) four pulse forming lines (PFLs), one voltage adder cavity (VAC), plus other associated switches and hardware. A conceptual design for this IVA module has been completed. Initial designs for the ISC, PFL, and their gas switches are also complete and hardware has been procured. Testing of these components is underway at Sandia National Laboratories. Discussions of these designs and results of tests are presented in this paper.
A high-voltage multistage laser-triggered gas switch
This paper describes the development and testing of an SF/sub 6/-insulated, multistage laser-triggered gas switch for use in the Hermes-III accelerator at Sandia National Laboratories. Twenty of these switches are used in Hermes III to transfer energy from intermediate energy storage water-dielectric capacitors to the pulse-forming lines (PFLs) and to provide the overall synchronization of the accelerator. The gas switches operate in an oil environment, are charged to a peak voltage between 2.2 MV and 2.4 MV in approx.1 ..mu..s, and are laser triggered with a root-mean-square (rms) jitter equal to or less than 2 ns. Both the triggered and untriggered performance of the switch have been investigated. A summary of the development tests are presented together with initial results from Hermes III.
The quantum particle in a box: what we can learn from classical electrodynamics
The problem of a charged particle enclosed in an infinite square potential well is analysed from the point of view of classical theory with the addition of the electromagnetic zero-point radiation field, with the aim to explore the extent to which such an analysis can contribute to enhance our understanding of the quantum behavior. First a proper treatment is made of the freely moving particle subject to the action of the radiation field, involving a frequency cutoff ωc. The jittering motion and the effective structure of the particle are sustained by the permanent action of the zero-point field. As a result, the particle interacts resonantly with the traveling field modes of frequency ωc in its proper frame of reference, which superpose to give rise to a modulated wave accompanying the particle. This is identified with the de Broglie wave, validating the choice of Compton’s frequency for ωc. For the stationary states of particles confined in the potential well, the Lorentz force produced by the accompanying field is shown to lead to discrete values for the mean speed and to an uneven probability distribution that echoes the corresponding quantum distribution. The relevance of the results obtained and the limitations of the classical approach used, are discussed in the context of present-day stochastic electrodynamics.