The Admittance of High Frequency Gas Discharges

Abstract

The admittance of a high frequency gaseous discharge between parallel plates has been measured as a function of pressure and discharge current. The susceptance is observed not to be proportional to the conductance. In fact the discharge susceptance changes sign from negative at low pressures and low electron densities to positive at high electron densities and high pressures. The discharge admittance is expressed as a volume integral over the complex conductivity. The non-linear relationship between discharge susceptance and conductance is shown to be a consequence of the non-uniform electron density along the direction of the field.