Compact Laser Drivers for Photoconductive Semicond

For effective protection against radiated threats, it is important to understand not only the physics of the threats, but also to quantify the effects they have on mission-critical electrical systems. Radiated vulnerability and susceptibility testing requires delivery of high peak power and peak electric fields to distant targets. The most practical solution to simulate such environments on large systems is to develop a modular, optically isolated MV-antenna array. This proposal presents an inexpensive 100 kV Pulse Charger and a low-jitter Laser Trigger System capable of driving gallium arsenide (GaAs) photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSS) to drive largescale antenna arrays with 300 ps of timing jitter. To prevent damaging the PCSS, the primary charge storage capacitor must be pulse charged in less than 10 us, therefore limiting the voltage seen by the switch. The initial simulations of the proposed pulse charger architecture is capable of delivering 5 J of energy within 7 us with a regulated output voltage of up to 100 kV. The optical parameters required to trigger the PCSSs are 10-300 uJ of ~840-880 nm light.