Collision cross sections in gaseous electronics. II. Inelastic collisions

Collision cross sections are very important for understanding the complicated collision processes that occur in an electrical discharge. The significance of inelastic collisions with respect to total scattering cross sections has been explained in the article. The meaning of rotational and vibrational excitation and the corresponding cross sections have been explained for various types of target particles with a number of examples. Excitation levels and ionization cross sections also have been explained so that a nonspecialist may obtain an overview for the broad purpose of appreciating the role of these cross sections in the discharge phenomena. Though data are available in a number of gases, cross sections have not been measured in a large number of gases, particularly those that have environmental and industrial cleanliness interest, such as NO
₂
, N
₂
O, O
₃
, NH
₃
, etc