Distribution of time delay of electrical breakdown in nitrogen

Gives the distribution of experimentally obtained values of time delay of electrical breakdown (t d ). Measurements of t d were made on a specially made nitrogen-filled diode at 13.33 mbar pressure. The results show that the distribution form is easily identifiable after about 500 successively measured t d values, and that its form may be estimated after about 100 successively measured t d values. These distributions were fitted using the least-squares polynomial approximation method. It was found that the best approximation is obtained by the seventh-order polynomial. Laue's distributions for three groups of successively measured t d values, in the range of one millisecond to several seconds, have the same form as those previously obtained by Meek and Craggs (1978), where t d values were of the order of one microsecond.