COMMENTS ON THE TIME EVOLUTION OF THE RESISTANCES AND INDUCTANCES OF THE DISCHARGES IN A PULSED GAS-LASER THROUGH ITS CURRENT WAVE-FORMS

In the above paper,(1) Persephonis et al. present a method for calcula ting the time evolution of the resistance and inductance from the meas ured current and voltage waveforms of a circuit. As it was pointed out by Fridman, from those measurements, it is impossible to obtain a uni que time evolution of the resistance and inductance; further hypothesi s are needed to solve the problem. In this comment we analyze the resu lts presented in the above paper and find several contradictory featur es, like violations to the Kirchoff's Law. Finally, we stress the fact that during the fast breakdown of a gas gap characterized by large, f ast varying values of the resistivity, it is impossible to meaningfull y and separately define a resistance and an inductance as lumped param eters of a circuit.