Investigation of scaling laws as applied to the gas discharge in the case of a barrier-discharge-excited Kr/CCl4 mixture

The electrical and luminescent characteristics of a barrier-discharge lamp filled with a Kr/CCl4 (150: 1) mixture are experimentally studied versus the value of pd, which varies in the range (7.6–14) × 103 Pa cm. When simulating the gas discharge using similarity parameters, the following relationships are fulfilled: for pd = const (p is the pressure, d is the interelectrode distance), the pulse duration and the mean current density are τ j ∼ 1/p and 〈j〉 ∼ p; the surface charge density on the electrodes, σ ∼ const; the duration of the UV radiation pulse and the efficiency of UV radiation due to a KrCl* (222 nm) exciplex, τrad ∼ 1/p and η ∼ p 2. The maximal radiation efficiency achieved in the experiments is about 13%. Deviations from the similarity laws for the gas discharge are related to the filamentary form of the observed discharge. Qualitative analysis indicates that similarity laws may be fulfilled for such a form of discharge as well but locally, within a single filament.