Investigation of the characteristics of fast-response sealed dischargers triggered by laser radiation

An investigation was made of new sealed cermet dischargers with a wave impedance of 50 Ohm, triggered by a train of picosecond pulses or by pulses of 100 nsec duration and 1060 nm wavelength. The minimum triggering energy was 2×10^–6–5×10^–7 J and the duration of the leading edge of the resultant voltage pulse was ~0.5 nsec. The dependences were obtained of the discharger delay time td on the triggering energy and the voltage across the electrodes. The conditions were found under which the delay time was t_d ≤ 10 nsec and the scatter of the delay time was Δt_d ≤ 1 nsec.