Transport properties of electron swarms in gaseous neon at low values of E/N

Abstract

A detailed analysis of electron swarm transport through neon gas at applied reduced electric fields of E/N < 2 Td is presented. The root mean square difference of transport parameters calculated from a recent all-order many-body perturbation theory treatment (Cheng et al 2014 Phys. Rev. A 89 012701) with drift velocity measurements by the Australian National University group (Robertson 1972 J. Phys. B 5 648) is less than 1%. Differences of about 3% exist with characteristic energies, DT/μ, (Koizumi et al 1984 J. Phys. B 17 4387) indicating an incompatibility at the 3% level between drift velocity and transverse diffusion coefficient measurements. Multi-term solutions of the Boltzmann equation indicate that the two-term approximation gives transport parameters accurate to better than 0.01%. The diffusion constant at thermal energies is found to be sensitive to the numerical representation of the cross section. A recommended elastic momentum transfer cross section has been constructed that has a maximum difference of 0.5% with all ANU drift velocity data for E/N < 1.6 Td and a root mean square difference that is about a factor of 2 smaller.