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Electronic phenomena in liquid argon and liquid helium

University of British Columbia

The development of low noise electronic equipment has facilitated the observation of ionic conduction pulses under alpha bombardment in liquid helium I and II, and a substantial extension of previous observations in liquid argon. Electron mobility in argon had been measured in fields between 2 kV/cm. and 200 kV/cm., the high field values agreeing with the order of magnitude previously reported. The scattering cross section for electrons is found to be of the order one hundredth that observed in gaseous argon. The low mobility of positive ions in liquid argon, observed for the first time, also shows that the liquid does not behave as a dense gas. Mobilities for both positive and negative ions in liquid helum I and II have been measured, also for the first time. The positive ions have low mobilities of the order of the positive ion mobility in argon, but the anomalously low mobility of the negative ions has not been explained. Ionic recombination, investigated in these liquids through direct current and pulse amplitude methods, is not described by the existing theory. Considerations are given which invalidates the model on which this theory is based, and an alternative model is suggested.

Text

2012-01-31

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/40387

Physics

University of British Columbia

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