A Negative Impedance Transformer

In previous papers, the authors have described the principle of ``negative´´ saturation and its practical applications. The main difference between circuits comprising saturable reactors driven into negative saturation on the one hand, and magnetic amplifiers on the other, is that in the former power current flows during the nonsaturation periods of the core (or cores), whereas in the latter it only flows when the core is saturated. In this paper, ``negative´´ saturation is used as a means of obtaining a negative voltage-current characteristic. This characteristic, obtained by means of a suitable antiparallel saturable reactor configuration, resembles that of the tunnel diode, with the fundamental difference that in the latter electrons ``tunnel´´ a potential barrier, whereas in the described circuit the negative slope is due to flux-resetting requirements.