Study of the thermal damage mechanism in the discharge of high power xenon lamp

With method of fixing wire in the high power pulsed xenon lamp tube, an experimental device of double lamp series was established to simulate the actual working environment of the xenon lamp. The experimental results show that the thermal damage with the pre delay time of 150μs is much more serious compared with the pre delay time of 250μs. The reason could be that the metastable particles formed by pre discharge are uneven with the former. The tube pale first appears near the left lamp anode and the right lamp cathode. The possible reason is that bifurcates and shifts of the plasma discharge channel are affected by the wire. The test results show that the main reason of thermal damage is that the temperature of discharge plasma is uneven inside the tube. By improving the structure of the lamp box and optimizing the pre delay time, the discharge plasma temperature can be decreased for the avoidance of the thermal damage.