Investigation of high current plasma opening switch at low gas pressure

The high power plasma opening switch (POS), combined with the inductive energy storage, can be applied in the power electron accelerator of microsecond operation. The POS discharge characteristics should be stabilized and governed. In the present work the POS behaviour in dependence on gas pressure, kind of gas, temporal input of plasma density, its spatial distribution, extent of plasma ionization, its averaged charge has been investigated to attain the commuted current enhancement.