I was thinking about the cat and mouse 'description' given by Rossi and an interesting thought arose. He states that the cat and mouse concept does not exist unless SSM is taking place. Also, he has stated that there is only one charge in an ECAT that is using the cat and mouse process.
All of these tidbits of evidence leads me to conclude that the mouse is the input drive being supplied in chunks of power, while the cat is the temperature changes that follow said mouse. Consider that power is expressed in joules per second and occurs for a portion of the time during a PWM drive waveform. That input power pulse (mouse) injects heat energy for a period of time and meanwhile the temperature of the system begins to rise as the thermal capacitance of the system integrates the energy of the pulse. There is always going to be a time constant associated with the integration function that makes the temperature(cat) appear to chase the input drive signal(mouse). This was very clearly evident during the latest MFMP testing where the input was driven in an on/off mode by the PID control system. You probably noticed that the glowing of the device was delayed when compared to the input drive timing. If DC is used for the input drive source then that behavior becomes invisible. The delay remains, but the lack of a PWM drive hides its presence. Dave
