Modeling of a DC glow discharge in a neon– xenon gas mixture at low pressure and with metastable atom densities

The physical properties of Ne–Xe DC glow discharges at low pressure are reported for a gap length of 1 cm for the first time in the literature. The model deals specifically with the first three moments of Boltzmann’s equation and includes the radiation processes and metastable atom densities. The spatio-temporal distributions of the electron and neon and xenon ion densities, the neon and xenon metastable atom densities, the electric potential and the electric field as well as the mean electron energy are presented at 1.5 Torr and 250 V. The current–voltage characteristic is shown at 3 Torr, and it is compared with previous work for pure neon gas. The model is validated theoretically and experimentally in the case of pure gas.