Classification of vacuum arc breakdowns in a pulsed DC system

Abstract

Understanding the microscopic phenomena behind vacuum arc ignition and generation is crucial for being able to control the breakdown rate, thus improving the effectiveness of many high-voltage applications where frequent breakdowns limit the operation. In this work, statistical properties of various aspects of breakdown, such as the number of pulses between breakdowns, breakdown locations and crater sizes are studied independently with almost identical Pulsed DC Systems at the University of Helsinki and in CERN. In high-gradient experiments, copper electrodes with parallel plate capacitor geometry, undergo thousands of breakdowns. The results support the classification of the events into primary and secondary breakdowns, based on the distance and number of pulses between two breakdowns. Primary events follow a power law on the log--log scale with the slope $\alpha \approx 1.33$, while the secondaries are highly dependent on the pulsing parameters.

arXiv comment11 pages, 13 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Beyond power laws: Universality in the average avalanche shape
• Thermal runaway of metal nano-tips during intense electron emission
• Direct observation of vacuum arc evolution with nanosecond resolution
• Stochastic Model of Breakdown Nucleation under Intense Electric Fields

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Vacuum electrical breakdown conditioning study in a parallel plate electrode pulsed DC system
• Effect of surface orientation on blistering of copper under high fluence keV hydrogen ion irradiation
• Simulating vacuum arc initiation by coupling emission, heating and plasma processes
• Biased self-diffusion on Cu surface due to electric field gradients
• Effect of dc voltage pulsing on high-vacuum electrical breakdowns near Cu surfaces
• Formation of field-induced breakdown precursors on metallic electrode surfaces
• Effects of H${}^{-}$ low beam irradiation and high field pulsing tests in different metals
• Surface and sub-surface modifications of copper electrodes exposed to high-field conditioning at cryogenic temperatures
• Linear voltage recovery after a breakdown in a pulsed dc system