Fluctuations and correlations of the formative and statistical time delay in neon

Abstract

The fluctuations and correlations of the formative tf and statistical time delay ts in neon are studied by electrical breakdown time delay measurements. The measurements were carried out at different preionization levels (afterglow periods) and the Gaussian distributions for the formative time were obtained to about 20 ms in afterglow. The formative time increases linearly with the afterglow period consistently with an exponential decay. After that, double-Gaussian (bi-normal) distributions for the formative time were obtained corresponding to and decay. For the statistical time delay Gaussian, Gauss-exponential and exponential distributions were obtained. It was found that the formative and statistical time delay are dependent variables for ts < tf and their correlations are estimated. The linear correlation coefficient is ρ ≈ 1 at high electron yields (rates of electron production) and ρ ≈ 0 at low electron yields.