1063-7842/05/5002- $26.00 © 2005 Pleiades Publishing, Inc. 0270 Technical Physics, Vol. 50, No. 2, 2005, pp. 270–273. Translated from Zhurnal Tekhnicheskoœ Fiziki, Vol. 75, No. 2, 2005, pp. 131–134. Original Russian Text Copyright © 2005 by Rybka, Baksht, Lomaev, Tarasenko, Krishnan, Thompson. INTRODUCTION Spontaneous emission sources based on pulsed or continuous-wave discharges in gases or gas–vapor mix- tures have found widespread application [1–4]. Of great promise are pulsed UV lamps based on a freely expanding high-pressure discharge (the so-called glob- ular pulsed lamps) [4]. Distinctive features of such lamps are the short pulse duration, the high emission power, a fairly high (a few electronvolts) temperature of the discharge plasma, the broad emission spectrum containing a continuum component, and the low dis- charge volume that enables the efficient optical focus- ing of radiation onto an irradiated object. As compared to discharges in other noble gases, discharges in xenon are characterized by the highest electric field and the lowest potential drop across the electrode sheaths. This feature makes discharges in xenon most promising from the standpoint of the lamp efficiency [1]. It is rea- sonable to employ the advantages of xenon globular lamps in developing inexpensive efficient emission sources for controlling high-voltage crystalline dia- mond switches [5–7]. It has been shown that such switches can be controlled by an electron beam [8] or a UV laser [9]. However, the use of lasers or electron accelerators in commercial switches is inexpedient because of their high cost. In this context, the develop- ment of an inexpensive pulsed UV source for control- ling a crystalline diamond switch is a challenging prob- lem. It is necessary that the bulk of the emission energy of such a source lie in the wavelength range of λ ≤ 250 nm, which corresponds to the fundamental absorp- tion band of crystalline diamond (λ ≤ 225 nm), as well as to the impurity absorption band [10, 11]. It is also desirable that the pulse duration of such a source be no longer than a few microseconds. This paper, which is a continuation of [12], is devoted to studying the emission characteristics of the plasma of a freely expanding discharge in xenon. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUE The experimental setup consisted of a storage capacitor bank and a high-voltage generator loaded on a pulsed gas-discharge lamp. The cylindrical quartz lamp with an inner diameter of 20 mm was filled with xenon. The interelectrode distance was 5 mm. The transmittance of the lamp wall in the spectral range of 200–250 nm was no less than 85%. The discharge circuit consisted of pulsed lamp F, storage capacitor C 0 , and trigatron switch S (Fig. 1). Capacitor C 0 was charged through resistance R. The charging voltage U 0 was 12 kV; the storage capacitance C 0 was either 3.3 or 233 nF; and the natural oscillation period of the discharge circuit was 0.08 or 0.85 μs, respectively. The system for recording the discharge emission consisted of an FÉK-22SPU coaxial phototube and an EPP2000C-25 spectrometer (manufactured by Stellar- Net Inc., USA) equipped with a CCD array photodetec- tor. The spectrometer was used to record the emission spectrum (in relative units) in the 200- to 850-nm spec- tral range. The FÉK-22SPU, with the known absolute spectral sensitivity in the 200–650 nm spectral range, Emission Characteristics of a Pulsed Discharge in Xenon D. V. Rybka*, E. Kh. Baksht*, M. I. Lomaev*, V. F. Tarasenko*, M. Krishnan**, and J. Thompson** * Institute of High Current Electronics, SB RAS, Tomsk, 634055 Russia ** Alameda Applied Sciences Corporation, CA 94577, San Leandro, USA e-mail: VFT@loi.hcei.tsc.ru Received May 25, 2004 Abstract—Emission characteristics of a high-current pulsed discharge in xenon are studied experimentally. The study is aimed at developing a source of spontaneous UV radiation (with λ ≤ 250 nm) for controlling high- voltage crystalline diamond switches. © 2005 Pleiades Publishing, Inc. BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS R F L S U 0 C 0 Fig. 1. Discharge circuit.