Study on the influence of corona current on the performance of multi-gap switch

Excimer lasers driven by linear transform driver (LTD) are expected to be used in inertial confinement fusion (ICF). The main problem of LTD in excimer lasers is synchronous triggering on multiple circuits, gas spark switches are important for synchronous triggering, which are required to be fired with low prefire probability and jitter. Multi-gap switch, as a kind of the gas spark switches, is always used in LTD. In this paper, a comparison study of corona discharge current of a multi-gap switch for LTD from the aspects of self-breakdown voltage and jitter is presented. The length of equalizing voltage needle was optimized by the electrical strength simulation. Using the optimized needle, the corona currents of the two gaps were measured, then it was found that the corona currents differ when the lengths of the corona needles were equal. To study if the difference of current in each gap affects the breakdown voltage and jitter of the switch, the length of the needle was adjusted to make the corona current the same. Then the breakdown voltage and jitter were measured under the two conditions of equal and unequal corona currents. It can be found that smaller the difference of current in each gap, higher the breakdown voltage and lower the jitter of the switch. It can be concluded that the corona needle can be adjusted to make corona current of each gap equal, which can be beneficial to increase the breakdown voltage and lower the jitter of the switch.