Improved Pulsed Townsend Discharge Experiment

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Abstract
The determination of Townsend ionization and attachment coefficients, and ion mobility by means of a pulsed discharge experiment is reviewed, and sources of error in the measurement are discussed. A new apparatus and technique designed to minimize these errors is described. Recent theoretical results incorporating the effects of diffusion and finite duration of the initial pulse are presented together with a nonlinear least‐squares procedure for obtaining the parameters of interest from the experimental data. Computation of confidence regions for the parameters is given, and it is shown that large errors can result from failure to use the more exact theory.