Quenching question.

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Luke" <Bluu-at-cox-dot-net> 

After reading a bit more about arcs (still taking some of it in) quenching 
occurs when the arc is cooled to the point where the air between the 
electrodes can no longer stay in a plasma state.  This cooling can be done 
by lowering the current through the arc or by external cooling like blowing 
cool air or gas across the gap.

This got me curious.
Imagine TC built with a gap that used external cooling of the gap to aid in 
quenching.

This cooling is variable and can be turned up or down to achieve optimum 
output.
For this question I don't care how the cooling is done or if there is a 
known way to get the amount of cooling needed.
Just imagine that it can be done to any level desired.

Obviously if the cooling were turned down the gap would heat up and not 
quench fast enough to allow the TC to operate efficiently.
As the cooling were turned up and the gap starts to quench faster the TC 
will perform better.
As the cooling is turned up and the quenching happens faster the time from 
arc to quench gets shorter.
So when the gap is left to conduct too long it hinders the TC performance 
and when the time of conduction is shortened the TC performance increases.

My question is this:
If a spark gap were made that could quench almost instantly after the arc 
is established could it be too fast to allow the TC to give good performance?

In other words if the time the gap conducted were brought to a very short 
time could it hinder performance of the TC?

It seems that if the time were too short, current would just start to flow 
from the capacitor to the primary coil then the gap could be made 
to  quench when only 1/16 of the power from the capacitor has emptied into 
the primary.  This would prevent the primary / secondary coils from seeing 
very much of the energy in the cap.

So do we want a gap that quenches real fast or do we want a gap that 
quenches at just about the right amount of time?  We seem to go for a gap 
that quenches very rapidly.  Could that be only because we can't get one to 
quench fast enough yet, let alone one that quenches too fast?

Thanx

Luke Galyan
<mailto:Bluu-at-cox-dot-net>Bluu-at-cox-dot-net
http://members.cox-dot-net/bluu