The Initiation of Electrical Breakdown in Vacuum
Open Access
- 1 May 1952
- journal article
- research article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Journal of Applied Physics
- Vol. 23 (5) , 518-522
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1702243
Abstract
The hypothesis is suggested that initiation of high voltage breakdown in vacuum is due to traversal of the high voltage gap by a clump of loosely adhering material. The implication of this hypothesis for uniform‐field gaps is that the breakdown voltage is proportional to the square root of the gap length. A summary the literature is presented which supports this conclusion for a range of voltages from 20 kilovolts to 7 megavolts, and for a range of gap distance from 0.2 mm to 6 meters. Additional qualitative evidence is presented which tends to support the proposed hypothesis.This publication has 9 references indexed in Scilit:
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