Low impedance z-pinch drivers without post-hole convolute current adders

Present-day pulsed-power systems operating in the terawatt regime typically use current adders to operate at sufficiently low impedance. These adders necessarily involve magnetic nulls that connect the positive and negative electrodes. The resultant loss of magnetic insulation results in electron losses in the vicinity of the nulls that can severely limit the efficiency of the delivery of the system’s energy to a load. In this paper, we describe an alternate transformer-based approach to obtaining low impedance. The transformer consists of coils whose windings are in parallel rather than in series, and does not suffer from the presence of magnetic nulls.