Pulsed high-voltage insulation experiments

Summary form only given. It has been conjectured that vacuum dielectric surface flashover can be avoided by preventing its initiation¹. Assuming that the flashover process is initiated by impact of charged particles on the insulator surface, by deflecting these particles away from the surface, the development of a flashover avalanche can be repressed. As evidence of this, we present the results of experiments where high-voltage fastrising microsecond timescale pulses are applied on vacuum insulator samples where we methodically manipulate the magnitude and the orientation of the electric fields at the anode and cathode triple junctions and along the insulator surface. Our experimental results agree well with the results of numerical simulations of the electric field distribution and the trajectories of primary and first generation secondary electrons.