Lighting circuit for electric discharge lamp

Abstract

A lighting circuit for an electric discharge lamp according to the present invention is constructed in such a way that a switching device is provided at an output terminal of a high frequency inverter which produces a substantially sinusoidal output voltage, and that, by controlling this switching device, an output to the low pressure electric discharge lamp is stopped at the rising part of the abovementioned output voltage in its half cycle, while the output is supplied to the low pressure electric discharge lamp at the voltage level in the vicinity of the maximum instantaneous value thereof. By use of the high frequency inverter of a smaller capacity and less radio noise than those in the conventional device, the operating efficiency of the low pressure electric discharge lamp can be increased.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.