Active Nitrogen, Airglow

Abstract

The theory of the "Lewis-Rayleigh afterglow" of nitrogen, originally given by Cario and Kaplan, is modified by taking into account recent work regarding resonance in collision processes and the value of the energy of dissociation of ${\mathrm{N}}_2$, accepted in this paper as 9.76 ev. Kaplan's "auroral afterglow," in which the spectrum of ${\mathrm{N}}_2^{+}$ is observed, is tentatively explained by ionization caused by collisions of two metastable molecules. The results are applied to the airglow.