Fundamental Processes of Electrical Discharge in Gases

Abstract

IN recent years the subject of electrical discharge in gases has entered upon a new and active phase. The burst of activity which was followed by J. J. Thomson's first classical treatise early in this century was ultimately slowed up because the presence of gas essential to the phenomena was in itself a stumbling-block, since it introduced variables not capable of independent experimental control. The focus of attention thus passed in subsequent years from self-maintained discharge to the relatively simpler phenomena in high vacua, with most valuable consequences, both theoretical and experimental. The position then reversed itself in that it was in the details of mechanism of high vacuum phenomena that our knowledge became so much more definite. The time was then ripe for a return to the more complicated problems arising from the introduction of gas at relatively high pressures; helped no doubt by industrial applications of glow discharge much new data has been accumulated during recent years and a critical treatise in the English language embodying these results and relating them to the familiar early work was much needed. Prof. Loeb's volume supplies this need, and the treatment is helped by the fact that the author himself has personally carried out or directed valuable researches on many of its aspects.

Fundamental Processes of Electrical Discharge in Gases

By Prof. Leonard B. Loeb. Pp. xviii + 717. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1939.) 42s. net.