An overview of the main design and performance of PBFA Z machine

PBFA Z is a new 60 TW/5 MJ electrical driver located at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL). It has been used to drive Z-pinches. The pulsed power design of PBFA Z is based on conventional single-pulse Marx generator with water-line pulse-forming technology used on the earlier Saturn and PBFA II accelerators. PBFA Z stores 11.4 MJ in its 36 Marx generators, couples 5 MJ in a 60 TW/105 ns pulse to the output water transmission lines, and delivers 3.0 MJ and 50 TW of electrical energy to the Z-pinch load. Depending on the initial load inductance and the implosion time, PBFA Z has attained peak currents of 16-20 MA with a rise time of 105 ns. Current is fed to the Z-pinch load through self-magnetically insulated transmission lines (MITLs). Peak electrical fields in the MITLs exceed 2 MV/cm. The current from the four independent conical-disk MITLs is combined together in a double post-hole vacuum convolute with an efficiency greater than 95%. SNL has achieved X-ray powers of 200TW and X-ray energies of 1.9 MJ from tungsten wire-array Z-pinch loads