Electron Temperature and Hg(63P) Atom Density Decay in a Mercury—Rare-Gas Afterglow

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Abstract
The electron temperature decay in the afterglow of Hg–Ne and Hg–Ar low‐pressure gas discharges has been investigated, both experimentally and theoretically. The temperature decay is not only determined by elastic losses but also by collisions of the first and second kind with excited Hg atoms. Collisions of the second kind have a heating effect on the electron gas and our results show that the energy relaxation time may increase by a factor of 10 by this process. Reasonable agreement has been obtained between the experimental data and the results of calculations which take the above processes into account. The electron temperature has been determined by means of 1.5‐GHz noise measurements, the Hg (63P) densities by means of optical line absorption.