Investigation of plasma opening switch with gaseous pulsed guns

Summary form only given. Experimental studies of microsecond plasma opening switch (POS) operation at the 0.3-TW level with different compositions of plasma produced by pulsed gaseous plasma guns were conducted. The guns used H₂, D₂, He, N₂, Ar, and Kr as active media. Each gun was fed by a capacitor bank of 3 μF, 25 kV. Results demonstrate the degradation of POS characteristics (voltage amplitude, front duration of switched current, and POS impedance) for higher masses of ion species. The best regimes of POS operation were obtained with H₂ guns when the voltage and power enhancement factors reached 5.5 and 4, respectively. Experiments at 10^-4-1O^-5 torr vacuum displayed the production of high-power proton beams in the POS even in the case of nonhydrogeneous plasma. This could be explained by the considerable input of POS secondary plasma production from the oil coating of the electrode surfaces