Optical and electrical investigations on the vacuum arc circuit-breaker

In this paper, the authors present the first results obtained in the characterization of the plasma produced in a vacuum arc circuit-breaker for industrial purposes. One of the main goals of the work is to clearly identify the transition of the diffuse to anodic mode of the arc as a function of the current and of the applied magnetic field. In a first approach, time and spatially resolved spectroscopic measurements were carried out in order to determine the plasma parameters, i.e. electron density, the different ion densities and temperatures