Studies in the behaviour of hydrogen and mercury at the electrode surfaces of spectrum tubes

Abstract

The apparently capricious control exercised over the spectrum of one gas by the presence of small quantities of another gas is known to involve a great many different processes. The rate at which ions of the one gas are neutralised may be profoundly modified if the other gas has a very different ionisation potential; both intensities of lines and their broadening in interionic fields will be altered in this way. The work of Merton and his followers on changes in intensity grouping of lines in mixed gases, and of Fulcher, Dempster, Hulburt and others on changes in line broadening in mixed gases, suggests that in most experiments the combination of the above processes is too complex for quantitative measure­ment of any one variable to be isolated.