Gas Discharges at Centimetre Wave-lengths

Abstract

EXPERIMENTS have recently been described¹ showing that at frequencies of 2,800 Mc./sec. and 9,800 Mc./sec. the breakdown of air takes place at stresses some 30 per cent lower than the breakdown values for steady voltages, for gaps of a few millimetres. In order to extend the observations to longer gaps, experiments are in progress on discharges in cavity resonators, where the necessary stress can be built up over longer gaps. Power is obtained from a magnetron excited by 1 microsecond pulses applied either individually or at the rate of 400 per second.