Flashlamp Simmer Circuit Using a Cockcroft Circuit

Pre-discharge of the excitation flashlamp has been effectively applied to solid state and dyelasers in order to stabilize and increase their laser output. This technique is known as a simmer discharge or simmer mode. Because the starting voltage in glow discharge greatly exceeds the voltage required for steady state glow discharge, a very high voltage power supply is required. Alternatively, a high voltage trigger circuit can be used in conjunction with the standard high voltage power supply. In this paper, we propose a new simmer discharge circuit using a Cockcroft circuit which has relatively low voltage regulation, and discuss its performance.