Nanosecond breakdown in a pulsed open discharge

Abstract

Abstract The paper presents the results of studies of open discharge breakdown characteristics at nanosecond supply pulse in helium, neon, argon working medium in a wide pressure range. It is shown that the open discharge exists in the range of p He = 20–100 Torr, pNe = 1.5–25 Torr, p Ar = 0.5–3.7 Torr with used experimental conditions. With increasing pressure, the role of separate elementary processes increases which can lead to a change of the discharge form to a presumably avalanche or streamer discharge. However, in this case, due to the photoemissive nature of the open discharge initiation, the similarity law Ep = f(pι) does not coincide with that for a nanosecond avalanche discharge.