Evaluation of Switch Jitter on a High Pressure Coaxial Spark Gap

Summary form only given. The design and jitter performance of a high-pressure, coaxial spark gap, triggered by field distortion of a center plane electrode is presented. Additional comparisons with trigatron style triggering are also presented. The switch was tested up to 100 pulses per second (pps) with a maximum switching voltage of 50 kV in nitrogen. Analysis will focus on jitter measurements taken over the full lifetime of the switch. This paper presents the results of this analysis. Specifically, switch jitter and lifetime are evaluated as a function of switch geometry as a whole and as a function of trigger electrode geometry.