Investigation of influence of cathode surface conditioning on mechanisms of electrical breakdown

The results of investigations of influences of electrode conditions on the electrical breakdown mechanisms are presented. Investigations are performed measuring the time delays on gas tube filled with nitrogen at 400 Pa. The analysis indicates necessity of the certain number of breakdowns for conditioning of electrode surfaces. The main finding is decrease of the minimal number of pre-conditioning breakdowns for stable electrode conditions with increase of the value of the relaxation time. In the cases where stationary conditions have not been established yet the asymmetry of the time delay distribution for short relaxation times is shown to be related with the number of measurements. In addition, the approach developed here is shown significant to clarify the properties of the time delay distributions.