Spark gap triggering with photoconductive switches

Photoconductive switches are well suited for triggering spark gaps since the triggering event is short and requires very little energy. Photoswitches offer fast-rising pulses of short duration with voltage levels of several tens of kV and tens of ps jitter and can be very simple in design, whereas typical trigger sources require multiple stages to generate tens of kV needed to effectively trigger a spark gap of the same potential and usually suffer from slow risetimes. This paper presents methods aimed at triggering spark gaps with photoswitches. Both linear and nonlinear photoswitches are discussed and their associated problems are presented.