CHILE - PUCCL

LABORATORIO DE OPTICA Y PLASMA
FACULTAD DE FISICA
PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DE CHILE

Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Casilla 306, Santiago 22

Telephone: +56 2 354 4501
Telefax: +56 2 553 6468

Head:	Chuaqui, Hernán (E-mail: hchuaqui@fis.puc.cl )

Favre, Mario (E-mail: mfavre@fis.puc.cl )
Mitchell, Ian H. (E-mail: imitchel@fis.puc.cl )
Wyndham, Edmund S. (E-mail: ewyndham@puc.cl )

Research activities:
Preliminary work on the generator LLAMPÜDKEÑ, is being carried out. The generator will provide a 250ns risetime pulse, 1.2MA, 4.7 x 10¹² A/s rate of rise. Each of the two Marx bank generators feeding parallel plate, centre live, water transmission lines, has a 0.25 micro F capacity, 480 kV maximum voltage, 28.8 kJ stored energy. The transmission lines have a main line of constant impedance, an exponential transfer section, main sparkgap, plus an auxilliary exponential line.

A wide range of pulsed dense plasma experiments will be carried out. Initially X-pinch discharges in metallic and deuterated fibre, at current levels of around 0.5 MA are planned, to be followed by vacuum spark discharges, multi-wire array discharges, gas-embedded Z-pinch in neutral gas background discharges. Operation at full current is expected by mid 2002. Work on a smaller generator on a Ti plasma in a capillary discharge is in progress.