Speaker
Description
See the full abstract here http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2019ABS/pdf/P5.2018.pdf
We describe a newly commissioned pulsed-power machine, "M3", for driving high energy density physics experiments at First Light Fusion. 2.5 MJ of stored electrical energy is discharged in 2 us, generating currents of up to 14 MA into a low-inductance load. The primary purpose of M3 is to launch high velocity projectiles for driving shocks into targets. The machine architecture consists of a 125 uF bipolar capacitor bank, with a maximum relative charge of 200 kV. The capacitors discharge via 92 multi-channel ball gap switches into 6 parallel plate transmission lines, which feed the current into the vacuum target chamber. Machine current is monitored with several in-fibre Faraday rotation probes. The diagnostic suite consists of imaging and streaked VISAR, laser backlighting and selfemission imaging onto fast optical framing and streak cameras, and optical and IR pyrometry. We also present data on initial M3 experiments that have been focussed on projectile launch techniques.
