Investigation of the breakdown temperature in capillary discharge plasmas

Abstract

We developed a simple way to estimate the breakdown temperature T-b of plasma electrons in a capillary, which is based on measurement of the electrical breakdown voltage V-b. The result shows that the breakdown temperature Tb decreases with increasing pressure. The thermal equilibrium electron temperature T-e in the capillary plasma after the electrical discharge is also measured by using the optical emission spectroscopy method. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.