Analysis of simple two-capacitor low-pass filters

The performance of typical low-pass capacitor filters is limited by the mutual inductance between the input and output sides of the filter. This paper describes how two appropriately spaced capacitors can be used to construct a low-pass filter with significantly better high-frequency performance than a one-capacitor filter. Laboratory measurements and numerical simulations are used to quantify the mutual inductance and compare the performance of one- and two-capacitor low-pass filters.