Experimental Demonstration of a Ridged Magnetically Insulated Transmission Line Oscillator

In this study, we investigate the effect of including ridged disk vanes on the operation of a magnetically insulated transmission line oscillator (MILO) in an experiment using a comparison of a ridged MILO (RMILO) with a conventional MILO (CMILO). The only technical difference between the two models is the presence of ridges in the RMILO. The experimental results show that when the voltage is 486 kV and the current is 51 kA, the RMILO’s peak microwave power is approximately 2.9 GW with a pulse duration of more than 35 ns and a microwave frequency of approximately 1.48 GHz. In contrast, the CMILO has the highest power microwave with a peak power of 2.1 GW corresponding to a pulse duration of more than 40 ns and a microwave frequency of approximately 1.53 GHz. The RMILO’s power efficiency increases to 11.7%, a 25% increase compared to that of the CMILO under the same conditions. The experimental measurements exactly coincide with the simulation results. Thus, including ridged disk vanes produces a superior performance.