Experimental study of pre-ionization on the behavior of short pulse flashlamp

Abstract

In this article, the behavior of a short pulse, pre-ionized flashlamp for pumping the laser-induced plasma has been experimentally studied. The total discharged energy is nearly 2 joules to generate 1 microsecond optical pulses. For this means, an especially designed discharge circuit with a single high voltage switch where consists of three trigatron switches in series was implemented. The observations show that the flashlamp doesn’t obey the classical Goncz’s V-I characteristics with a constant under experimental conditions. The flashlamp behavior can be more suitably described with a Freundlich’s equation. Moreover, the parameter is a function of the discharge current with a different behavior on the leading and falling edges of the current pulse. The shortest flashlamp optical pulses were achieved with about 5 microseconds delay time among the pre-ionization and the main discharge of flashlamp.

Keywords

• flashlamp
• pre-ionization
• freundlich’s equation
• trigatron switch