Mixture distributions for the statistical time delay in synthetic air at low pressure

¹ Department of Physics, Faculty of Sciences and Mathematics, University of Niš, PO Box 224, 18001 Niš, Serbia
² Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Sciences and Mathematics, University of Niš, PO Box 224, 18001 Niš, Serbia

^a e-mail: alexandar.bmf@gmail.com

Received: 8 April 2014
Revised: 6 June 2014
Accepted: 13 June 2014
Published online: 1 August 2014

Abstract

The mixture distributions for statistical time delay of electrical breakdown are proposed along with the generalized relation for the effective electron yield. The validity of the proposed model is tested by applying this distribution to experimental data measured in synthetic air at low pressure. Two samples without and with oxide surface are compared in order to determine physical processes leading to appearance of mixture distributions in the case of oxidized cathode. The obtained distributions are tested by Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistical hypothesis test in order to justify the use of mixture distributions. The physical interpretation of mixture distribution measured in the synthetic air is proposed, accompanied by the calculated values of the effective electron yield of initiating electrons in the gas gap.