High-power sources with smoothly adjustable pulse duration for powering gas-discharge tubes of laser pumping systems

A series of power supplies for gas-discharge tubes in laser pumping systems has been developed on the basis of the same circuit but with different levels of partial discharge of the capacitive energy storing device. The charger converts the a.c. network voltage into a constant current, very efficiently and at the same charging rate regardless of the discharge level. An overall size and weight reduction is made possible by an intermediate frequency conversion from 50 Hz to 1 kHz, which also allows raising the repetition rate of output pulses. The charger consists of an inverter and a rectifier. The parallel-type inverter includes a thyristor-diode bridge with capacitors and a transformer, and a choke coil, for converting the sine-wave a.c. network voltage into a higher-frequency (1 kHz) square-wave alternating one after the first rectifying it. An important feature here is stiff overvoltage suppression, especially across the switching capacitors, during wide swings such as from no load to full load. The rectifier includes a 300/1000 V step-up transformer with another thyristor-diode bridge and a choke coil in series. A discharge commutator across the rectifier output shunted by a filter-capacitance ensures proper cutoff of the charge discharge current and corresponding control of the pulse duration.