Measurement of the electron density in Transient Spark discharge

Abstract

This paper presents our measurements of the electron density in a streamer-to-spark transition discharge, which is named transient spark (TS), in atmospheric pressure air. Despite the dc applied voltage, TS has a pulsed character with short (∼10–100 ns) high current (>1 A) pulses, with a repetition frequency on the order of kHz. The electron density ne ∼ 1017 cm−3 at maximum is reached in TS with repetition frequencies below ∼3 kHz, using relatively low power delivered to the plasma (0.2–3 W).