Help with nitrogen laser project (1MW) circuit analysis.....

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Adam R." <arabraxas@xxxxxxxxxxx>

At 07:09 PM 8/17/2005, you wrote:
> Sorry this is a bit off topic,

Oh!  That is always a "dead giveaway" to the moderator :o)))))

> but I'm having real trouble analyzing the circuit of a nitrogen 
> laser (123cm long channel). It doesn't use an inverted LC circuit 
> (which, i guess, is the ubiquitous design), instead, it uses a 
> "charge transfer technique"--which I don't understand too well or 
> can find much direct info about.
>
> First, here's a schem of it: 
> <http://img18.exs.cx/img18/5646/schem7fh.jpg>http://img18.exs.cx/img18/5646/schem7fh.jpg
>  C2 is dumped into C1 [NOTE the left part i scraped: instead of a 
> thyratron, i am using a spark gap to trigger]
>
> The power supply is 5ma at 20kv half wave rectified DC.
>
> The latter part of the sentence gets me: how do I analyze this 
> circuit in respects to half wave (DC)? ie, how are C2 and C1 charged 
> explicitly? it seems odd how they are connected....i'm trying to 
> form step by step how a discharge is formed in the channel (a 4cm 
> gap at 100 torr).
>
> An idea i'm questioning is: would chaning the air spark gap with my 
> rotary one from my tesla coil?

Oh!!  Said "Tesla coil"...  An "attempt" to stay on topic ;-))

> my reasoning is since its half waved DC, if i make the gap fire 60 
> times a sec, it will fire on the highest point on the top of the + 
> peak, therefore, it should discharge when the caps are charged the 
> most. is this correct? or do the caps interact differently to how i 
> am thinking?
>
> sorry for the long load of questions, but hopefully i'll get this 
> working well! any suggestions for what topics i should look up in an 
> EE book might also help....
>
> thanks for taking the time to help!

Best to reply directly and off list if not TC related ;-)

"Adam R." <arabraxas@xxxxxxxxxxx>