RF Frequency Oscillations in the Early Stages of Vacuum Arc Collapse

RF frequency oscillations may be produced in a typical capacitive charging / discharging pulsed power system. These oscillations may be benign, parasitic, destructive or crucial to energy deposition. In some applications, proper damping of oscillations may be critical to proper plasma formation. Because the energy deposited into the plasma is a function of plasma and circuit conditions, the entire plasma / circuit system needs to be considered as a unit To accomplish this, the initiation of plasma is modeled as a time-varying, non-linear element in a circuit analysis model. The predicted spectra are compared to empirical power density spectra including those obtained from vacuum arcs.