Plasma opening switch using plasmas produced by a pulsed CO/sub 2/ laser

Author

Ihara, S. ; Mori, S. ; Ishimine, M. ; Satoh, S. ; Yamabe, C. ; Akiyama, H.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Electron. Eng., Saga Univ., Japan

Volume

2

fYear

1997

fDate

June 29 1997-July 2 1997

Firstpage

1196

Abstract

Plasma opening switches have been studied by using laser-produced plasmas. In this paper, a CO/sub 2/ laser (5 J/pulse, 5.5 MW peak power and 10.6 /spl mu/m wavelength) was used as a plasma source of the plasma opening switch (POS). The plasma parameters were measured by Faraday cup, Langmuir probe and a monochromator. It was found that ions with a fast flow velocity are required to obtain the fast opening time, and thermalized plasmas with a slow velocity decrease the opening time. However, the POS operation was improved by the switch modifications despite the existence of thermalized plasmas.

Keywords

Langmuir probes; gas lasers; plasma production by laser; plasma switches; pulsed power switches; 10.6 mum; 5.5 MW; CO/sub 2/; Faraday cup; Langmuir probe; fast flow velocity ions; fast opening time; laser produced plasmas; plasma opening switch; plasma parameters measurement; plasma source; pulsed CO/sub 2/ laser; switch modifications; thermalized plasmas; Laser theory; Optical pulses; Plasma applications; Plasma materials processing; Plasma measurements; Plasma sources; Plasma waves; Power lasers; Space vector pulse width modulation; Switches;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Pulsed Power Conference, 1997. Digest of Technical Papers. 1997 11th IEEE International

Conference_Location

Baltimore, MA, USA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-4213-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PPC.1997.674562

Filename

674562