Time-resolved diagnostic of an impulse discharge in variable pressure air

The effect of gas pressure on the characteristics of a short-gap lightning discharge in air was investigated. For the tests, 70 ns front lightning pulses were applied to a short (11 cm) point-plane gap under variable pressure. The diagnostics employed included electric current and field measurements, spectroscopy in the visible and fast-frame photography. We found that the pressure has a clear effect on the electric field at the plane. For low pressures, the high fields measured (∼7 kV cm-1) are comparable to the Laplacian field, indicating that very little ionization takes place in the gap at this pressure; at higher pressures the space charge contributes substantially to the field magnitude. The effect of pressure on the current pulse was, in contrast, minimal; its peak amplitude and shape remained largely unaffected by pressure. Time-resolved spectroscopy allowed the determination of the instantaneous electron density and temperature to be made; the latter, for example, was found to reach 33 000 K at t ∼ 1 μs for most of the pressures employed. Using the measured temperature and radius we made estimations of the arc's resistance. We found that the Spitzer resistivity model gives values of resistance that are compatible with the experimental data obtained