Triggering of cold-cathode thyratron in electric circuit with grounded grid

This paper deals with the investigations of the sealed-off hold-cathode thyratron (pseudospark switch) TPI1-10k/50, which is commercially produced by the Pulsed Technology Ltd., Ryazan, Russia. The trigger unit of the switch is based on a low-current auxiliary glow discharge. The new method for the switch triggering is proposed. The essence of the method is that the thyratron grid and the hollow cathode of the auxiliary discharge has to be grounded and the trigger pulse is applied to the ring anode of the trigger unit. In the proposed method, an undesirable high-voltage spike at the thyratron grid, which can appear with a usage of the other methods of triggering, is absent. It is shown that to trigger the thyratron a critical pulsed current to the main cathode cavity at a level of 0.8 A and higher should be provided. When the current exceeds the critical value, the jitter in the delay time to triggering falls in a range of 10 ns. This means that the method of triggering can be used in a variety of applications that require a low jitter in the delay time.