采用放电图像拍摄和放电波形测量两种方法研究了放电激励HF激光工作介质SF6气体的放电特性。实验结果表明：SF6气体放电可以分为主放电、剩余电压维持和电弧放电3个阶段。主放电阶段为均匀体放电，电容储能大部分在此阶段沉积于放电等离子体中；剩余电压维持阶段无明显放电；在电弧放电阶段激光器以电弧形式消耗剩余储能。通过对放电波形的分析，获得剩余电压及主放电阶段能量沉积效率随充电电压的变化规律。随着充电电压提高，剩余电压下降，沉积效率逐渐提高。沉积效率最大值对应于主放电与电弧放电相接的时刻。

Both electrical discharge waveforms and pictures recorded by multi-frame camera at different times are used to study the SF6 discharge characteristics in HF laser. The experimental results indicate that the discharge process can be divided into three stages as main discharge, residual voltage maintenance and arc discharge. In the main discharge stage, uniform volume discharge occurs and the energy stored in the capacitors deposits mainly in the discharge plasma. In the residual voltage maintenance stage, no evident discharge is observed. In the arc discharge stage, the residual energy is dissipated through arc. The dependency of energy deposition efficiency and residual voltage on charge voltage is obtained by analyzing the discharge waveforms. With charging voltage increasing, the residual voltage drops, and the deposition efficiency goes up. At the time when the arc discharge meets with the main discharge, the deposition efficiency reaches the maximum.