Study of Collision Effects between the Constituents of a Mixture of Helium and Nitrogen Gases When Excited by a 10-keV Electron Beam

Measurements were made of the effects of collisions between nitrogen and helium excited by a 10-kV electron beam. The interaction between the excited particles was found to give rise to an afterglow of the 3914-Å band of N2+ on the order of 10−7 sec, which was observable at concentrations of helium greater than 75%. A departure from a Boltzmann distribution of rotational energies of the N2+ band was also measured.