Kinetic loss experiments on Mite

The authors have conducted experiments on Sandia National Laboratories' Mite accelerator (2MV, 4.8 ohms) to study the effect of geometric transitions on power flow in a magnetically insulated power feed. The effect of both changing gaps (electric convolutes) and changing line widths (magnetic convolutes) were studied. These geometric transitions caused electron losses which depended on both the abruptness of the transition and the downstream load impedance. These losses, due to perturbation of the orbits of the magnetically insulated electron flow in the anode-cathode gap, are called kinetic losses. Temporally and spatially resolved measurements of these losses were made using Faraday cups and filtered, 4-chlorostyrene, radiochromic dosimeters. The effect of an anode plasma on magnetically insulated electron flow was also studied. The kinetic losses measured in these experiments can be significant in some situations