Medium pressure mercury discharge for use as an intense white light source

摘要

Currently the mercury products that dominate the lighting market are that of the low-pressure mercury-argon discharges, which employ a phosphor that converts mercury's resonant far-UV emissions into visible light and the high-pressure mercury lamps where the pressure broadened mercury lines occupy the entire visible range. In this work we focused on discharges employing mercury at a medium pressure of a few Torr as they have shown the potential to be used as bright white light sources. Those characteristics become even stronger when the discharges are pulse operated instead of run at a steady state.