language: en

A Note on the Throbbing of Glow Discharges in Gases at Low Pressures

Rafi M. Chaudhri and Tasneem Zahra
Centre for Solid State Physics University of Punjab,
Lahore Pakistan
and M. Munawar Chaudhri
Cavendish Laboratory,
Cambridge, U.K.
Z. Naturforsch. 86a, 674-676 (1981);

[received December 24, 1980]

The phenomenon of the throbbing of glow discharges was first studied by Thomson [1] in 1931. The discharge tubes he used were probably covered with a sputtered film and the gas pressure was not controlled. He explained this phenomenon by the electrical charging of the tube walls. Since Thomson's paper there has been virtually no work on this interesting phenomenon. In this note we report on throbbing phenomena in tubes free from a sputtered film and suggest that in this situation the mechanism is the formation and decay of the negative ions in the gas rather than electrical charging of the walls of the tube.

Three types of discharge tubes (all of Pyrex