For ac PDP, the lifetime should be guaranted over, 30000 hours. The lifetime is correlated with the deterioration characteristics for the weakest element in ac PDP. However, the short-term deterioration test method of the at PDP has not well developed. In this paper, a short term deterioration test method of a given element in the ac PDP is proposed. By this method, MgO deterioration characteristics are investigated. The deterioration rate is decreased with MgO thickness but it was almost saturated over 5000$AA$.