Energy dissipation on electrodes during high-voltage vacuum breakdown

In many practical devices, such as in high-power ion accelerators, it is desirable to determine the amount of energy that the electrodes can withstand without degrading the voltage hold-off characteristics. With this in mind, the energy deposited on the electrodes during high-voltage vacuum breakdown is experimentally determined. Even with no lumped element in series with the vacuum gap, only a fraction (about 40%) of the stored energy is deposited on the electrodes, much of it on the anode. Correlating the energy measured with the current flow shows that most of the energy deposition on the electrode takes place during the formation phase of the vacuum arc