Intense gigawatt relativistic electron beam generation in the presence of prepulse. Part II

Intense relativistic electron beam diode has been operated without a prepulse switch. Our previously reported results demonstrated that the large pulse power systems in the presence of prepulse can deliver gigawatt power pulses into a matched load if the anode cathode gap is set larger than that estimated by the Child Langmuir relation. This article reports some more experimental results on the current and voltage characteristics, the shot to shot reproducibility of the diode in the presence of prepulse. Intense electron beam diode behavior was studied for various anode cathode gaps and voltages in presence of prepulse. It has been observed that for small gap, prepulse generated plasma completely fills the anode cathode gap and the diode behaves as plasma filled diode. At a large gap the beam parameters obtained are 420 keV, 22 kA, 100 ns. From the experimentally obtained values of perveance an upper limit was set up for the Marx voltage (or anode cathode voltage) and lower limit for the anode cathode gap in order to avoid the gap closure problem and the diode can be operated with a better shot to shot reproducibility.