Estimation of cathode-initiated breakdown in vacuum

Cathode initiation of vacuum breakdown in DC and pulse modes is considered. New criteria and methods for evaluating the cathode initiation mechanism are proposed. They are based on consideration of relative changes in cathode surface state and electric strength. The elaborated criteria and methods have been verified with experiments results using DC and pulse modes of high-voltage treatment of electrodes. Accuracy of the proposed methods exceeds known methods precision. It is shown that optimum modes of pulsed conditioning can be used for definition of top boundary of cathode initiation mechanism applicability in DC mode.