Demonstration of plasma focus operation without using sliding discharge on a glass or ceramic insulator for plasma initiation

This paper reports on experimental work related to a technology development project that had to be abandoned in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recognizing that the window of opportunity for timely exploitation of this technology is no longer open and also taking into account the likely future commercial value of the downstream innovations, it was decided to partially release proprietary experimental information which is of current scientific interest to the plasma focus community. This information pertains to the replacement of the traditional plasma initiation method using a sliding discharge on a glass or ceramic insulator with a novel construction. This paper discusses the motivation, theoretical background, practical realization and experimental observations. Some downstream novel plasma focus based technology concepts that are heavily dependent on this innovation are briefly described