AExperimental studies of ablation-controlled arc discharges in plasma generator

Ablation-controlled arcs (ACA' s) compensated by materials being ablated from the capillary wall are of great interest. The pulsed power supply used to perform the experiments consisted of three modules storing 800kJ as a driver for an ablation-controlled arc plasma generator. A sequence of tests in which the capillary radius, length and ablated material are varied and in which the capillary power dissipation levels are varied in a certain range are discussed in order to determine the impedance matching between the discharge and the power source. By the analytical model, dependence of the plasma temperature and pressure on above variations could be known.