The load current multiplier concept (LCM) was suggested for improving the energy transfer efficiency from pulse power generators to loads. The concept was initially demonstrated at atmospheric pressure and dielectric insulation on a compact, 100 kA, microsecond capacitor bank. This paper reports on the LCM design criteria for mega-ampere vacuum pulse power when the LCM comprises a large-inductance magnetic flux extruder cavity without a magnetic core. The analytical and numerical design approach presented was experimentally validated on GIT12 mega-ampere inductive energy storage generator with a constant-inductance load. The LCM technique increased the peak load current from typically 4.6 MA at 1.87 µs on this generator, to 6.43 MA at 2.0 µs. The electromagnetic power into a ~10 nH load increased from 100 GW to 230 GW. This result is in good agreement with the presented numerical simulations and it corresponds to a 95% increase of the achievable magnetic pressure at 8 cm radius in the load. The compact, LCM hardware allows the GIT12 generator to operate more efficiently without modifying the stored energy or architecture. The demonstrated load power and energy increase using the LCM concept is of importance for further studies on power amplification in vacuum and high energy density physics.

This work describes an inductive energy storage scheme intended for power multiplication at mega-Ampere currents. The key power multiplication element of the scheme is an opening switch generating the voltage of inductive origin. The switch represents an additional volume with magnetically accelerated solid-state or plasma conductor between the generator and the load. Motion of the conductor increases the inductance of the volume. A sufficiently fast increase of this inductance at the end of magnetic energy storage time ensures power multiplication. A critical requirement for the accelerated conductor is the possibility of temporal profiling of the inductance increase. A proof-of-principle experiment at GIT12 shows that such profiling is possible. We suggest a simple analysis of the scheme efficiency and illustrate this analysis for a multi-mega-Ampere class generator. The scheme is alternative to existing inductive energy storage technologies for pulsed-power conditioning at high currents.