The Experimental Determination of the Primary Ionization Coefficients at Low Gas Pressures

Abstract

An assessment of the method used to measure values of the Townsend primary coefficient of ionization at low pressures is given. This shows that the secondary processes of ionization must, in general, be taken into consideration in the analysis of the data, especially at pressures of the order of a few millimetres of mercury, in order to obtain accurate values of α/p0.