Abstract: The effect of storage capacitors loss on the discharging characteristics of the xenon flash lamp was studied, and the xenon flash lamp discharging circuit was analyzed and improved. The capacitor can be equivalent to a series of an ideal capacitor and a loss resistance. The improved formula of the xenon lamp discharging characteristics was given when actual capacitance loss is not zero, and the xenon lamp discharging current and discharging power are calculated and analyzed in detail with the increase of the capacitor loss. The results show that the increase of loss will lead to the decrease of xenon lamp discharging current and peak power and the xenon lamp flash time, and influence laser pumping efficiency. The loss will also lead to the capacitor inverse charging in LC discharging circuit; this will influence normal working of the capacitor and decrease the life of the xenon lamp. The actual energy storage capacitor charging and discharging experiments show that the increase of capacitor loss will lead to the decrease of xenon lamp light-emitting waveform peak, shortening of the flash time and increase of the electrode sputter, thus verity, the reasonableness of theoretical analysis. In addition, the experiments show that environmental factors have very significant impact on the increase of the storage capacitor loss.