Mechanisms of destruction of the partition foil of an electron gun,and methods of its protection,in the case of streamer breakdown of the discharge gap

In the practical use of electron-beam discharge lasers an important problem is that of their operating reliability. The weakest spot of an EBL is the electron-gun partition foil, and the main cause of its failure is the breakdown of the discharge gap. This paper reports investigations of the mechanisms that destroy the foil and propose for its protection a method that makes it possible to significantly increase the operating reliability of the EBL.Translated from Trudy Ordena Lenina Fizicheskogo Institute Im. P. N. Lebedeva, Vol. 116, pp. 202–208, 1980.