INTRODUCTION TO GAS DISCHARGES

GAS DISCHARGE FUNDAMENTALS

We consider first the collisions of ions and electrons with the neutral atoms in a partially ionized
plasma. Collisions between charged particles are more complicated.
Since neutral atoms have no external electric field, ions and electrons do not feel the presence of
a neutral until they come within an atomic radius of it. When an electron, say, collides with
a neutral, it will bounce off it most of the time as if it were a billiard ball. We can then assign to
the atom an effective cross -sectional area, or momentum transfer cross section, which means
that, on the average, an electron hitting such an area around the center of an atom would have its
(vector) momentum changed by a lot; a lot being a change comparable to the size of the original
momentum. The cross section that an electron sees depends on its energy, so in general a cross
section [σ ] depends on the energy, or, on average, the temperature of the bombarding particles.
Atoms are about 10−8 cm (1Angstrom) in radius, so atomic cross sections tend to be around 10−16
cm2 (1 Å2) in magnitude. People often express cross sections in units of πa0 2 = 0.88 × 10−16 cm2,
where a0 is the radius of the hydrogen atom.

Definition of cross section

At high energies, cross sections tend to decrease with energy, varying as 1/v, where v is the
velocity of the incoming particle. This is because the electron goes past the atom so fast that
there is not enough time for the electric field of the outermost electrons of the atom to change the
momentum of the passing particle.

1
 Diffusion is a random walk process.

At low energies, however, σ (v) can be more constant, or can even go up with energy, depending
on the details of how the atomic fields are shaped. A famous case is the Ramsauer cross section,
occurring for noble gases like argon, which takes a deep dive around 1 eV. Electrons of such low
energies can almost pass through a Ramsauer atom without knowing it is there. Ions have
somewhat higher cross sections with neutrals because the similarity in mass makes it easier for
the ion to exchange momentum with the neutral. Ions
colliding with neutrals of the same species, such as Cl with Cl+, have a special effect, called a
charge exchange collision. A ion passing close to an atom can pull off an outer electron from the
atom, thus ionizing it. The ion then becomes a fast neutral, while the neutral becomes a slow ion.
There is no large momentum exchange, but the change in identity makes it look like a huge
collision in which the ion has lost most of its energy. Charge exchange cross sections (σcx) can
be as large as 100 πa0 2.

Unless one is dealing with a monoenergetic beam of electrons or ions, a much more useful
quantity is the collision probability <σv>, measured in cm3/sec, where the average is taken over
a Maxwellian distribution at temperature KTe or KTi. The average rate at which each electron in
that distribution makes a collision with an atom is then <σv> times the density of neutrals; thus,
the collision frequency is:

𝜈 𝑛 𝜎𝑣 𝑝𝑒𝑟 𝑠𝑒𝑐 (1)

If the density of electrons is ne, the number of collisions per cm3/sec is just

𝑛 𝑛 𝜎𝑣 (2)
The same rate holds for ion-neutral collisions if the appropriate ion value of <σv> is used. On
average, a particle makes a collision after traveling a distance λm, called the mean free path.
Since distance is velocity times time, dividing v by Eq. (1) (before averaging) gives
𝜆 (3)

2
This is actually the mean free path for each velocity of particle, not the average mean free path
for a Maxwellian distribution.

If the incoming particle has enough energy, it can do more than bounce off an atom; it can
disturb the electrons orbiting the atom, making an inelastic collision.
Sometimes only the outermost electron is kicked into a higher energy level, leaving the atom in
an excited state.
The atom then decays spontaneously into a metastable state or back to the ground level, emitting
a photon of a particular energy or wavelength. There is an excitation cross section for each such
transition or each spectral line that is characteristic of that atom. Electrons of higher energy can
knock an electron off the atom entirely, thus ionizing it. As every freshman physics student
knows, it takes 13.6 eV to ionize a hydrogen atom; most other atoms have ionization thresholds
slightly higher than this value. The frequency of ionization is related by Eq. (3) to the ionization
cross section σion, which obviously is zero below the threshold energy Eion. It increases rapidly
above Eion, then tapers off around 50 or 100 eV and then decays at very high energies because
the electrons zip by so fast that their force on the bound electrons is felt only for a very short
time. Since only a small number of electrons in the tail of a 4-eV distribution, say, have
3
enough energy to ionize, σion increases exponentially with KTe up to temperatures of 100 eV or
so.
Double ionizations are extremely rare in a single collision, but a singly ionized atom can be
ionized in another collision with an electron to become doubly ionized; for instance
Ar+ → Ar++.
Industrial plasmas are usually cool enough that almost all ions are only singly charged. Some
ions have an affinity for electrons and can hold on to an extra one, becoming a negative ion.
Cl− and the molecule SF6 − are common examples. There are electron attachment cross sections
for this process, which occurs at very low electron temperatures.

Coulomb collisions; resistivity

Now we consider collisions between charged particles (Coulomb collisions). We can give a
physical description of the action and then the formulas that will be useful, but the derivation of
these formulas is beyond our scope. When an electron collides with an ion , it feels the electric
field of the positive ion from a distance and is gradually pulled toward it. Conversely, an electron
can feel the repelling field of another electron when it is many atomic radii away. These particles
are basically point charges, so they do not actually collide; they swing around one another and
change their trajectories. We can define an effective cross section as πh2, where h is the
impact parameter (the distance the particle would miss its target by if it went straight) for which
the trajectory is deflected by 90°. However, this is not the real cross section, because there is
Debye shielding. A cloud of negative charge is attracted around any positive charge and
shields out the electric field so that it is much weaker at large distances than it would otherwise
be. This Debye cloud has a thickness of order λD. The amount of potential that can leak out of the

4
Debye cloud is about ½KTe. Because of this shielding, incident particles suffer only a small
change in trajectory most of the time. However, there are many such small-angle collisions, and
their cumulative effect is to make the effective cross section larger.
This effect is difficult to calculate exactly, but fortunately the details make little difference. The
90° cross section is to be multiplied by a factor ln Λ, where Λ is the ratio λD/h. Since only the
logarithm of Λ enters, one does not have to evaluate Λ exactly; ln Λ can be approximated
by 10 in almost all situations we shall encounter. The resulting approximate formulas for the
electron-ion and electron-electron collision frequencies are, respectively,

where ncm is in cm−3, TeV is KTe in eV, and lnΛ ≈ 10.

There are, of course, many other types of collisions, but these formulas are all we need most of
the time.
Note that these frequencies depend only on Te, because the ions. slight motion during the
collision can be neglected. The factor n on the right is of course the density of the targets, but for
singly charged ions the ion and electron densities are the same. Note also that the collision
frequency varies as KTe −3/2, or on v−3. For charged particles, the collision rate decreases much
faster with temperature than for neutral collisions. In hot plasmas, the particles collide so
infrequently that we can consider the plasma to be collisionless.
The resistivity of a piece of copper wire depends on how frequently the conduction electrons
collide with the copper ions as they try to move through them to carry the current. Similarly,
plasma has a resistivity related to the collision rate νei above. The specific resistivity of a
plasma is given by
𝑚𝜈
𝜂 (5)
𝑛𝑒
Note that the factor n cancels out because νei ∝ n. The plasma resistivity is independent
of density. This is because the number of charge carriers increases with density, but so does the
number of ions which slow them down. In practical units, resistivity is given by
. ∧
𝜂∥ Ω 𝑚 (6)

5
Here we have generalized to ions of charge Z and have added a parallel sign to η in anticipation
of the magnetic field case.
Since the dependence on M is weak, these values can also be used for other gases. The subscript
II means that this value of η is to be used for motions parallel to B. For motions perpendicular to
B, one should use η┴ given by

𝜂 =2𝜂∥ (7)

For a plasma with KTe=100eV from eq (6) the resistivity will be equal to 5x10-5 Ω-cm.
The resistivity of copper 2x10-6 and for stainless steel is 7x10-4 Ω-cm.

The expression for η in a plasma, has several features which should be pointed out:
(A) we see that the η is independent of density (except for the weak dependence in In A.
The reason is that although j increases with ni the frictional drag against the
ions increases with ni. Since ne, = ni these two effects cancel.
The collision frequency νei is indeed proportional to n, but the factor n cancels out in η. A fully
ionized plasma behaves quite differently from a weakly ionized one in this respect.
In a weakly ionized plasma, we have
j = -neve ; ve, = -,µe E so that j = neµeE.
Since, µe depends only on the density of neutrals, the current is proportional to the plasma
density n.
(B) the resistivity is proportional to (KTe )3/2. As a plasma is heated, the Coulomb cross
section decreases, and the resistivity drops rather rapidly with increasing temperature. Plasmas at
thermonuclear temperatures (tens of keV) are essentially collisionless; this is the reason so much
theoretical research is done on collisionless plasmas. Of course, there must always be some
collisions; otherwise, there would not be any fusion reactions either. An easy way to heat a
plasma is simply to pass a current through it. The I2R (or j2η) losses then turn up as an increase in
electron temperature. This is called ohmic heating. The (KTe,)-3/2 dependence of η, however, does
not allow this method to be used up to thermonuclear temperatures. The plasma becomes such a

6
good conductor at temperatures above 1 keV that ohmic heating is a very slow process in that
range.
(C) Equation [6] shows that ν ei varies as v -3. The fast electrons in the tail of the velocity
distribution make very few collisions. The current is therefore carried mainly by these electrons
rather than by the bulk of the electrons in the main body of the distribution. The strong
dependence on v has another interesting consequence. If an electric field is suddenly applied to a
plasma, a phenomenon known as electron runaway can occur. A few electrons which happen to
be moving fast in the direction of -E when the field is applied will have gained so much
energy before encountering an ion that they can make only a glancing collision. This allows them
to pick up more energy from the electric field and decrease their collision cross section even
further. If E is large enough, the cross section falls so fast that these runaway electrons never
make a collision. They form an accelerated electron beam detached from the main body of the
distribution.