Power flow studies of Magnetically Insulated lines

The designs for relativistic electron beam accelerators with power levels of 20 to 100 TW are greatly restricted by the inductance of a single diode of reasonable size. This fact leads to modular designs of very large accelerators. One concept uses several small insulators at a large radius arranged around the accelerator center. The total effective inductance is then low, but the energy must then be transported by self-magnetic insulated vacuum lines to the target volume. A triplate vacuum line configuration eases many mechanical support problems and allows more A-K gaps or feed to be packaged around a given radius. This type of vacuum transmission line was chosen for initial experiments at Sandia. The experiments have been conducted on the MITE (Magnetically Insulated Transmission Experiment) accelerator which is described elsewhere in the proceedings. The water pulse forming lines are connected to a vacuum triplate line through a conventional stacked insulator. Diagnostics on the experiment consisted of 1) input V, 2) input İ, 3) İ monitor at the input, middle, and output of both the center conductor and ground plane of the transmission line, 4) magnetic energy analyzer to view peak electron energy in the A-K gap, 5) colorimetry, and 6) Faraday cups to look at electron current flowing across the transmission line. The main goal of the experiment is to obtain input impedance of the transmission line as a function of voltage and to measure electron loss currents. These measurements are compared to theoretical models for the input impedance and energy losses.