Bipolar shaper of nanosecond pulses

A description is given of a bipolar shaper of high-voltage pulses for feeding the streamer chamber of a magnetic spectrometer. The pulse shaper consists of two coaxial forming lines contained in a common casing which is the earth electrode of these lines. To improve the reliability of the pulse shaper, the minimum quantity of solid insulator is used in the discharge chamber. The walls of the latter are made of a thin (approximately 0.3 mm) corrugated fluoroplastic film in the form of a bellows of internal diameter 45 mm. Equalization of the pressure in the discharge chamber and in the casing of the shaper occurs in a special connecting pipe. The casing of the shaper and the insulators are designed to work at an internal casing pressure of up to 30 atm. The proposed design of the shaper allows the generation of pulses with the following parameters: rise time 6 ns, duration 25 ns, amplitude +-100 kV, amplitude of prepulse approximately 20%. The results are given of an investigation of the stability of the voltage pulse parameters in different regimes. It is established that the basic reason for amplitude instability is spread of the triggering time of the spark gap of the pulse shaper