HIGH FREQUENCY GAS DISCHARGE BREAKDOWN IN NEON

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Abstract
Electrical breakdown of neon at high frequencies has been treated theoretically on the basis of the Boltzmann transport equation. Exciting and ionizing collisions are accounted for as energy loss terms in the Boltzmann equation and measured values of the ionization efficiency are used in the integral determining the ionization rate. Electrons are lost to the discharge by diffusion. The equations are treated separately for the cases in which the collision frequency is much less than or much greater than the radian frequency of the applied field. The electron energy distribution functions are expressed in terms of Bessel functions, confluent hypergeometric functions, and simple exponentials. The ionization rate and the diffusion coefficient are calculated using these distribution functions in kinetic theory formulas, and combined with the diffusion equation to predict breakdown fields. The theoretically predicted fields are compared with experiment at 3000 Mc. per sec. The breakdown equations, calculated from kinetic theory and using no gas discharge data other than collision cross sections, predict breakdown electric fields within the limits of accuracy determined by these cross sections over a large range of experimental variables.