Circuit-design criteria for improvement of xenon flash-lamp performance (lamp life, light-pulse, narrowness, uniformity of light intensity in a series of flashes)

Xenon flash lamps are one of the brightest light sources available. They are used from simple applications like camera flashes to extremely demanding ones such as photometry, chemical analysis, spectroscopy, etc. A power supply to drive a xenon lamp must provide a substantially high voltage and current, and must provide a controlled high voltage pulse to strike the arc. The influence of the parameters of the power supply and parasitics on light output, stability and lamp life is analyzed in this paper. The experimental results have been evaluated with several types of lamps and with power supplies developed to make them.