SOME FEATURES OF POWER BALANCE IN NORMAL GLOW-DISCHARGE IN CO2, N2, AND THEIR MIXTURES WITH HE

The results of the theoretical and experimental investigation of a power balance in a normal glow discharge in CO2, N2, and their mixtures with He are given. It is shown that power contributed to this discharge goes essentially to the excitation of the metastable oscillatory levels of the CO2 and N2 molecules and to their dissociation. It is ascertained that the relaxation of the excited levels occurs on the discharge tube walls, while the recombination takes place into the tube space by the triple collisions with the transition of bond energy to the Joule heat. The experimental data enable one to assert also that the shape of the electron distribution function in the discharge considered is invariant with respect to average electron energy into its range 0.3 less-than-or-equal-to <epsilon> less-than-or-equal-to 6 eV.