Peculiarities of breakdown and current development in a pulsed “open” discharge

We present the results of a study of the breakdown characteristics of a planar “open” discharge in helium when excited by pulses with nanosecond rising edge. It is demonstrated that the development of the discharge is characterized by considerably larger values of the reduced electric field strength than in the avalanche discharge. A similarity criterion was obtained for discharges with a predominance of the photoemission mechanism of electron generation, according to which the rate of discharge development is proportional to the square of the working gas pressure.