A Note on the Excitation of the Arc Spectrum of Nitrogen

The arc spectrum of nitrogen has been excited with low voltage arcs in mixtures of argon and nitrogen. A comparison of the intensities of the lines showed that the strong N I lines were as intense as the moderately strong argon lines. The excitation takes place probably in two steps, the first being the dissociation of the nitrogen molecules into normal and metastable nitrogen atoms by collisions with metastable argon atoms, and the second being the excitation of the metastable nitrogen atoms by collisions with metastable argon atoms.