Experimental study of polarity dependence in repetitive nanosecond-pulse breakdown

Pulsed breakdown of dry air at ambient pressure has been investigated in the point-plane geometry, using repetitive nanosecond pulses with 10 ns risetime, 20-30 ns duration, and up to 100 kV amplitude. A major concern in this paper is to study the dependence of breakdown strength on the point-electrode polarity. Applied voltage, breakdown current and repetitive stressing time are measured under the experimental conditions of some variables including pulse voltage peak, gap spacing and repetition rate. The results show that increasing the E-field strength can decrease breakdown time lag, repetitive stressing time and the number of applied pulses as expected. However, compared with the traditional polarity dependence it is weakened and not significant in the repetitive nanosecond-pulse breakdown. The ambiguous polarity dependence in the experimental study is involved with an accumulation effect of residual charges and metastable states. Moreover, it is suggested that the reactions associated with the detachment of negative ions and impact deactivation of metastable species could provide a source of primary initiating electrons for breakdown.

Measurement and control for a repetitive nanosecond-pulse breakdown experiment in polymer films

In order to perform data acquisition and avoid unwanted over-current damage to the power supply, a convenient and real-time method of experimentally investigating repetitive nanosecond-pulse breakdown in polymer dielectric samples is presented. The measurement-acquisition and control system not only records breakdown voltage and current, and time-to-breakdown duration, but also provides a real-time power-off protection for the power supply. Furthermore, the number of applied pulses can be calculated by the product of the time-to-breakdown duration and repetition rate. When the measured time-to-breakdown duration error is taken into account, the repetition rate of applied nanosecond-pulses should be below 40kHz. In addition, some experimental data on repetitive nanosecond-pulse breakdown of polymer films are presented and discussed.

Reconstruction of energy spectrum of runaway electrons in nanosecond-pulse discharges in atmospheric air

This paper presents an experimental investigation into the runaway electron spectrum with a gas diode composed of a rough spherical cathode and plane anode under the excitation of a nanosecond-pulse generator in atmospheric air.The runaway electron beams are measured by a collector covered with aluminum foil with a thickness from 0μm(mesh grid)to 50μm.The energy spectrum is calculated by an improved Tikhonov regularization called the maximum entropy method.The experimental results show that the transition state of the discharge consisted of multiple streamer channels stretched from the cathode with glow-like plasma uniformly distributed over the anode.The number of runaway electrons measured by the collector is in the order of 1010 in atmospheric pressure air with a gap spacing of 5 mm and applied voltages of70–130 kV.The cathode with a rough surface creates a more inhomogeneous electric field and larger emission site for the runaway electrons around the cathode,providing conditions for the coexistence of filamentary streamer and diffuse discharge.The reconstructed spectra show that the energy distribution of the runaway electrons presents a single-peak profile with energies from eU_(m/2)–2 eU_(m/3)(U_(m)is maximal voltage across the gap).

Nanosecond-pulsed, dual-wavelength, passively Q-switched ytterbium-doped bulk laser based on few-layer MoS2 saturable absorber

A compact saturable absorber mirror（SAM） based on few-layer molybdenum disulfide（MoS2） nanoplatelets was fabricated and successfully used as an efficient saturable absorber（SA） for the passively Q-switched solid-state laser at 1 μm wavelength. Pulses as short as 182 ns were obtained from a ytterbium-doped（Yb:LGGG） bulk laser Q-switched by the MoS2 SAM, which we believe to be the shortest one ever achieved from the MoS2 SAs-based Q-switched bulk lasers. A maximum average output power of 0.6 W was obtained with a slope efficiency of 24%,corresponding to single pulse energy up to 1.8 μJ. In addition, the simultaneous dual-wavelength Q-switching at 1025.2 and 1028.1 nm has been successfully achieved. The results indicate the promising potential of few-layer MoS2 nanoplatelets as nonlinear optical switches for achieving efficient pulsed bulk lasers.

Plasma Sheet Actuator Driven by Repetitive Nanosecond Pulses with a Negative DC Component

A type of electrical discharge called sliding discharge was developed to generate plasma aerodynamic actuation for flow control. A three-electrode plasma sheet actuator driven by repetitive nanosecond pulses with a negative DC component was used to generate sliding discharge, which can be called nanosecond-pulse sliding discharge. The phenomenology and behaviour of the plasma sheet actuator were investigated experimentally. Discharge morphology shows that the formation of nanosecond-pulse sliding discharge is dependent on the peak value of the repetitive nanosecond pulses and negative DC component applied on the plasma sheet actuator. Compared to dielectric barrier discharge （DBD）, the extension of plasma in nanosecond-pulse sliding discharge is quasi-diffusive, stable, longer and more intensive. Test results of particle image velocimetry demonstrate that the negative DC component applied to a third electrode could significantly modify the topology of the flow induced by nanosecond-pulse DBD. Body force induced by the nanosecond-pulse sliding discharge can be approximately in the order of mN. Both the maximum velocity and the body force induced by sliding discharge increase significantly as compared to single DBD. Therefore, nanosecond-pulse sliding discharge is a preferable plasma aerodynamic actuation generation mode, which is very promising in the field of aerodynamics.