a) 21st Symposium on Plasma Physics and Technology, 21 SPPT, Prague, Czech Republic, June 14-17, 2004,

Program & Abstracts, p. 35 (Poster presentation)

b) Proceedings of the 21st Symposium on Plasma Physics and Technology, 21 SPPT, Prague, Czech Republic,
June 14-17, 2004, Czechoslovak Journal of Physics 54 (2004), Supplement C, pp. C309-C313

Gasfilled lasertriggered spark gap

O. Frolov, K. Kolacek, V. Bohacek,
J. Straus, J. Schmidt, V. Prukner
Department of Pulse Plasma System, Institute of Plasma Physics,
Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic,
P. O. Box 17, Za Slovankou 3, 182 21, Prague 8, Czech Republic
Received 24 April 2004
We report 200 ps jitter operation of highvoltage air/nitrogen pressurized spark gap
triggered by 850 mJ/5 ns Nd:YAG laser. It is studied the delay and the jitter of this spark
gap as a function of voltage, energy of laser pulse, gas pressure and angle of incidence
of the laser beam. These experiments will resulted in recommendation for construction
of lowjitter spark gap in our new pulsecapillarydischarge driver.
PACS : 52.80.Mg
Key words: spark gap, laser, trigger, jitter, delay, breakdown

Introduction

Gasfilled spark gaps satisfy a range of plasmaclosure switching requirements

involving capacitive discharge circuits. There are three basic switch types: passive,
electrically triggered, and laser triggered. Passive switches have only two electrodes
and operate spontaneously when the applied voltage exceeds the selfbreakdown
voltage. Electrically triggered switches employ three electrodes and require an external trigger generator to initiate breakdown; two configurations exist: trigatron
and field distortion. Unfortunately, these systems result in high jitter values due to
the fact that two breakdown events are required for switch closure. Lasertriggered
switches consist of two electrodes and a lens that focuses laser radiation onto an
onaxis or midplane point between these electrodes; the lasergenerated spark
initiates breakdown. The laser pulse is the fastest way to switch a triggered spark
gap. Lasertriggered switches offer very precise triggering and the lowest jitter of all
types of the gasfilled triggered switches. The main characteristics inherent to the
lasertriggered spark gap are electrical decoupling, remote operation, short and
variable delay with low jitter, simple structure, reproducible, reliable, low maintenance, EMI insensitive, suitable for repetitive operation, lowvoltage triggering
of long gaps, suitability for multigap or multichannel operation and suitability
for all types of dielectric media. For all switch models, the breakdown characteristics are determined by gas type, internal pressure, electrode geometry, electrode
material and electrode surface conditioning.
The use of lasers for spark gap discharge triggering was already reported over
35 years ago [1]. The light of visible or infrared lasers with energy of a few Joules
was focused by a lens onto a surface of one electrode. At voltages which are 50 %
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O. Frolov et al.

of the selfbreakdown value the delay time and jitter were obtained and amounted
to several hundreds ns and 20 ns accordingly. These experiments were reexamined
by Dougal and Williams [2].
The infrared Nd:YAG lasers with output energy of a few hundreds mJ are widely
used for lasertriggered switching [3]. This can be explained by their possibility to
exceed easily the intensities necessary for tunnelionization of atoms and molecules.
For rough estimate the Keldysh parameter [4] is used. Herein, we report the several
hundred picosecond jitter operation of a pressurized spark gap triggered by Nd:YAG
laser pulses with energies ranging from 250 to 850 mJ.
2

Experimental apparatus

A schematic representation of the experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1. The

pressurized spark gap consists of two tungstencuprum (70/30) electrodes and
a lens. The electrodes are separated by distances ranging from 1.2 to 13 mm. The
Rogowski coil is placed on the inner side of the flange with ground electrode. In all
the experiments reported herein, the spark gap was filled with nitrogen or air with
pressures ranging from 100 to 600 kPa. The infrared laser beam enters into the
electrode gap through the window and hole in the anode (in case angle of incidence
of the laser beam is 0 ), being focused onto a surface of the ground electrode by
a f = 200 mm lens. A spark is produced when the local electric field within the
focal volume exceeds the minimum required for avalanche ionization. We tested two
angles of incidence of the laser beam: 45 and 0 degrees to the surface of the ground
electrode.

Air

photodiode

Rogowski coil

Rogowski coil
Laser beam

Insulator
Laser beam
Insulator

Air/Nitrogen
7 nF photodiode

H. V.

7 nF
H. V.

Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the experimental apparat us.

The angle of incidence of the laser beam is 45 and 0 .

The laser used for triggering the spark gap was a 1064nm Qswitched Nd:YAG
laser (Quantel Brilliant B) with a repetition rate of 10 Hz, but used in single pulse
operation mode. Its maximum optical energy is 850 mJ, pulse duration is 5 ns
FWHM, the laser beam divergence is 0.5 mrad and the output beam diameter is
8 mm. The spark gap discharges a 7 nF/50 kV capacitor into a low inductance load.
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Gasfilled lasertriggered spark gap

The time delay between the laser pulse (registered by photodiode) and the beginning of current pulse (monitored by Rogowski coil) was measured using 2 GSa/s
digitizing oscilloscope HP54542C. The laserinduced breakdown was investigated
at voltages ranging from 50 % to 90 % of the spark gap selfbreakdown value.
3

Results

We investigated two angles of incidence of the laser beam, various pressures,

percentages of selfbreakdown voltage, and energies of the laser pulse. Herein, the
delay time was defined as the time difference between beginning of the laser pulse
and the current pulse (Fig. 2). The jitter (reproducibility) is defined as the average
deviation of the delay time from its mean value for the given case.
1
Delay

Voltage Arb. Units

0
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5
0

10

12

Time (ns)

Fig. 2. Typical laser (red) and current (pink) pulses are shown.

120

350
300
Jitter (ns)

Delay (ns)

100

45
0

250
200
150
100

45
0

80
60
40
20

50

0
45

55
65
75
85
Percentage of self-breakdown voltage

95

45

55
65
75
85
Percentage of self-breakdown voltage

95

Fig. 3. Spark gap delay time and jitter as a function of selfbreakdown voltage. The angles
of incidence of the laser beam were 45 and 0 to the surface of the ground electrode.
The gap distance was adjustable from 7.2 to 13 mm. The spark gap filled with air at an
atmospheric pressure. The voltage was 19.5 kV. The energy of the laser beam was 850 mJ.

The dependence of the delay and the jitter on the percentage of selfbreakdown
voltage in the range from 50 % to 90 % of selfbreakdown voltage is shown in Fig. 3.
Both these quantities (delay and jitter) reduce as the percentage of selfbreakdown
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O. Frolov et al.

voltage increases. At low percentages of selfbreakdown voltage delay and jitter are
significantly different for two angles of incidence of the laser beam: while at 45
incidence the delay and jitter dramatically increase with diminishing the percentage
of selfbreakdown voltage, at 0 incidence both these quantities only slightly rise.
This is because in the later case streamers propagate along the same path as the
laser beam that preexcites and preionizes gas on its way.
The effect of the pressure of nitrogen on delay and jitter is shown in Fig. 4
for electrode separation 1.2 mm, angle of incidence 0 , and pressure range from
100 to 600 kPa. The delay has a maximum at pressure 400 kPa (probably due to
molecular structure of the gas). The jitter rises with nitrogen pressure and reaches
value of several hundreds of picosecond at nitrogen pressure 600 kPa.

29

0.75

27

0.70
0.65

23

Jitter (ns)

Delay (ns)

25

21
19

0.60
0.55
0.50

17

0.45

15
13

0.40
0

100

200

300
400
Pressure (kPa)

500

600

700

100

200

300
400
Pressure (kPa)

500

600

700

40

2.5

35

2
Jitter (ns)

Delay (ns)

Fig. 4. Spark gap delay and jitter vs pressure of nitrogen from 100 to 600 kPa. The
electrode separation was 1.2 mm at voltage around 80 % of selfbreakdown voltage.
The energy of the laser pulse was 850 mJ. The angle of incidence of the laser beam
was 0 to the surface of the ground electrode.

30
25
20

1.5
1
0.5

15

0
200

300

400
500
600
700
Laser pulse energy (mJ)

800

900

200

300

400
500
600
700
Laser pulse energy (mJ)

800

900

Fig. 5.
Delay and jitter vs laser pulse energy from 250 to 850 mJ in nitrogen at pressure 200 kPa. The electrode separation was 1.2 mm at voltage
around 80 % of selfbreakdown voltage. The angle of incidence of the laser beam
was 0 to the surface of the ground electrode.

The dependence of the delay and the jitter on laser power at the nitrogen filling
pressure 200 kPa, electrode gap 1.2 mm, and angle of incidence 0 is shown in Fig. 5.
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Gasfilled lasertriggered spark gap

At high laser pulse energies a low switch jitter was observed (for energy of the laser
pulse around 800 mJ the jitter fell down to 200 ps), this is probably positively
influenced by very good reproducibility of laser pulses. For the delay significantly
greater than the laser pulse duration, the buildup of the avalanche proceeds with
statistical fluctuations which, as rule of thumb, tend to make the jitter up to 10 %
of the delay.
These results will be used for construction of lowjitter lasertriggered spark
gap in our new pulsecapillarydischarge driver [5].
4

Conclusions

This paper investigates a modified geometry of lasertriggered spark gap with

45 angle of incidence of laser beam on the electrode surface. The dependencies
of the main switching characteristics delay and jitter on the gas filling pressure, the percentage of selfbreakdown voltage, the energy of laser pulse and the
angle of incidence of laser beam are measured. We have demonstrated that with
850 mJ/5 ns Nd:YAG laser triggering the spark gap closure jitter of several hundreds picosecond can be easily achieved. The lowest jitter 200 ps is received at 80 %
of selfbreakdown voltage, pressure 200 kPa and 750 mJ laser pulse energy. On the
other hand, 45 angle of incidence on the electrode surface is not very suitable,
because in this geometry both the delay and the jitter are much more sensitive to
other parameters. A further research in this field is in progress.
This research has been performed under auspices and with the support of both the
Czech Grant Agency under Contract 202/03/0711 (electrical and mechanical part) and
the Ministry of Education Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic under Contract
1P2004LA235 (optical part).

References
[1] A. H. Guenther and J. R. Bettis: IEEE J. Quantum Electronics 3 (1967) 581.
[2] R. A. Dougal and P. F. Williams: J. Phys. D 17 (1984) 903.
[3] A. H. Guenther and J. R. Bettis: J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 11 (1978) 1577.
[4] L. V. Keldysh: Sov. Phys. JETP 20 (1965) 1307.
[5] O. Frolov, K. Kolacek, J. Schmidt, V. Bohacek, V. Prukner, M. Ripa:
WDS03 Proceedings of Contributed Papers, Part II (2003) 477.

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