Propagation of luminous voltage pulses during initiation of discharges

Abstract

A critical assessment has been made of experiments on the propagation of luminous voltage pulses in tubes of lengths up to 40 m in low-pressure gases. The pulses have magnitudes ( V) in the range 01-50 kV and speeds (v) from sonic to c/2. Curves of the relations between v and V for slow pulses extrapolate reasonably to the values for fast pulses. The observation that positive pulses are slower than negative for small values of V, and vice versa, is correlated with results of experiments in uniform fields. Some ionization is photoelectric. Structure and atomic parameters are not known well enough to yield rate integrals for the processes that determine v. The basis for any theory must be the observation that V is concentrated at the pulse front.