Glow discharge period at the ignition operation of a high-intensity discharge lamp

Abstract

Intermittent breakdown and a successive glow discharge trigger an arc discharge of a high intensity discharge (HID) lamp. Increase of plasma pressure due to heating of discharge lamp causes transition from glow to arc discharge. Thus, the duration of glow discharge period for making glow to arc transition should be affected by the initial temperature of the lamp discharge tube. The experimentally measured correlation between the glow discharge period and the initial temperature of the lamp tube before ignition operation has shown a good agreement with a simple heat transfer model.