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Increased electromagnetic contamination of the environment accompanied with the amplified miniaturization of electronic components underline the issue of the reliable operation of electronics. Reliability is of utmost importance in special applications such as medical instruments, nuclear installations, fusion experiments, etc., where larger magnetic fields occur during operation. Therefore, the interest for insulation components that consistently protect instrumentation from overvoltage is growing. This paper deals with the effects important for the stability of a gas surge arrester, the most commonly used low-voltage component for the overvoltage protection. The effect of the magnetic field on DC and the impulse breakdown of noble gases is investigated. For the theoretical interpretation of the obtained results, the spectrum of free electron gas was determined, which enabled the evaluation of a new expression for the first Townsend coefficient. The results obtained in that way were verified through comparison with theoretically calculated results. Experiments were carried out under well-controlled laboratory conditions.

The paper presents results of electrical breakdown time delay mean value t?d as a function of relaxation time ? (memory curve) for krypton and xenon-filled diodes at 270 Pa pressure. Memory curves were obtained for the cases without radiation as well as in the presence of gamma and UV radiation. It was shown that significant influence of UV radiation to t?d can be observed for ? ? 100 ms, as well as gamma radiation for ? ? 103 ms. Laue's distribution was also investigated for electrical breakdown time delay data sets td, obtained for ? ? 150 ms, without radiation as well as in the presence of gamma and UV radiation. It was shown that for all these data sets Laue's distribution stands, except for the case when krypton-filled tube was subjected to UV radiation. On the basis of the obtained results, the throughout analysis was performed with the aim to investigate possible application of these diodes as sensors of gamma and UV radiation.

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