On the calculation of low-inductance spark discharges

Abstract

Calculations have been made of the spark constant of Weizel and Rompe (1947) which is an essential quantity of a theory describing the electric behaviour of low-inductance spark discharges. Modifications proposed earlier have been taken into account, and almost quantitative agreement has been obtained between experimentally and theoretically determined values for Ar, Xe, and air.

On the theory of the spark plasma in nanosecond light sources and fast spark-gap switches

“…This seemed to be necessary because there was no theory on the behaviour of the plasma produced in such lamps. Recently we showed that the theory of Weizel and Rompe (1947) could be extended to thermal plasmas, and it then gave a good approach to low-inductance spark discharges with a half-width of the electrical pulse typically of 100 ns (Hess 1973, Hess and Deparade 1974, Hess and Radtke 1975).…”

The pressure dependence of the spark constant

“…After an adaptation (Hess 1973) of the theory of Weizel and Rompe (1947) to LTE plasmas (plasmas in local thermodynamic equilibrium) we could show the good applicability of the modified theory to low-inductance spark discharges (Hess andDeparade 1974, Hess 1975). Furthermore, we calculated the temperature dependence of the spark constant, which is an essential quantity of the theory, and found that there indeed exists a temperature range in which this quantity is nearly constant and in which its value agrees with experiment (Hess and Radtke 1975).…”

“…where PO is the initial pressure, U the electrical conductivity, and U the specific internal energy of the discharge plasma. Subsequent to our earlier paper (Hess and Radtke 1975), we calculated the spark constant as a function of the temperature with the initial density as a parameter (figure 1). For each density we show three different curves corresponding to different values for the shielding distance used for the calculation of the electrical conductivity (Radtke and Guenther 1973) because there is a deviation from the Debye behaviour of the plasma when there is only one particle or less in the Debye sphere as in our plasma and it is convenient to take into account these deviations by choosing a shielding distance larger than the Debye radius D.…”