Influences of Gas Density Depletion on High-Pressure, Pulsed Glow Discharge

Abstract

High-pressure, pulsed glow discharge has been studied for the excitation discharge in TEA gas lasers.Various instabilities occur in the subsequent discharge, which induce the arc and collapse for the highly-repetitive operation. In this paper, the influences of the gas density depletion on the high-pressure, pulsed glow discharge have been investigated eliminating the other instabilities such as shock waves, residual ions, discharge products and electrode heating.The gas density depletion was produced by utilizing a subsonic flow between the curved electrodes. The comparison has been made on the discharge occurred in the presence of the gas density depletion with that by the doublepulse experiment in a stable gas.The big gas density non-uniformity tends to cause the arc without the shocks, ions, discharge products and electrode heating.The transition from glow to arc discharge discontinuously occurs with respect to the gas density depletion.On the other hand, the second discharge in the double-pulse experiment becomes arc in much smaller gas density non-uniformity, and the transition from glow to arc occurs gradually.The arc discharge might be driven by some factors other than the gas density depletion.