Keele Research Repository

Because of the important industrial applications of mercury, most work in the field of mercury vapour discharges has been carried out On mercury vapour arcs. The work described in this thesis is concerned with the fundamental processes operative in mercury vapour in the Townsend region of gas discharges, when the cathode used is a mercury pool.
Apparatus has been developed with which it was possible to obtain data on breakdown potentials, primary ionization coefficients and formative time lags. Generalized secondary ionization coefficients were calculated from the breakdown potentials and primary ionization coefficients as a function of E/po. This curve is interpreted in the light of calculations made of the numbers of excited atoms in each of the 'P' states per ion pair, and the application of Davidson's treatment of the temporal growth of ionization.