EXCITATION OF PLASMA BY ELECTRIC PULSES IN NEON MEDIUM
We studied characteristics of the neon plasma source excited in the atmosphere under the following conditions: gas pressure is about 2 Torr, rectangular pulses have an amplitude from 200 to 800 V, pulse duration is from 0.2 to 10 μs, repetition rate is from 0.2 up to 1 kHz. There is a mode with a stable and unstable mode of existence of the plasma when the voltage on the electrodes of the plasma source varies from 800 to 350 V and from 350 to 250 V before the extinction of the plasma. The pulse from the PMT output in a steady state plasma has a decay of about 100 μs, the duration of which does not depend on the magnitude of the voltage, frequency and pulse duration. With a decrease in the supply voltage U, the pulse front duration with a photomultiplier is increased from 74 to 450 ns. It is shown that a large neon plasma relaxation time of 100 µs compared with a beam pulse duration of 1…2 µs allows only one time to change the phase of the accelerating field.