Laser triggering of spark gap switches with less than 100 μJ´s of energy

Summary form only given. Concepts of future pulsed power systems include designs having high numbers of switches and in some cases will perform pulse shaping by triggering the switches at multiple points in time. For example, drivers for isentropic compression experiments are being designed having tens of trigger points and hundreds of switches. Larger systems, such as future generations of the Z-machine based on linear transformer driver technology, require hundreds of thousands of triggered switches. The cost and complexity of triggering these future pulsed power systems with commercially available high voltage trigger generators continues to be prohibitive. In addition the required trigger energy and high voltage cable network necessary for electrical triggering would be enormous. Conventional laser triggering in these systems also becomes cost prohibitive and maintenance of line-of-sight optics increases the cost of day to day operations. Improvements over present day triggering technologies would include electrical isolation through the use of small optical fibers and the ability to trigger large numbers of switches from a single laser. Results from experiments that demonstrate the triggering of a 20 kV spark gap switch with less than 100 muJ of laser energy through an optical fiber are presented.