Investigations on the stability of the low pressure positive column in oxygen

The stability of the low pressure positive column in oxygen was investigated in a pressure range from 0.5 to 0.9 Torr within a discharge current interval from 0.5 to 90 mA. The transition between the well-known T- and H-modes has been studied. The H- to T-mode transition showed a marked hysteresis in the E(I) characteristic which is affected by wall processes. For the first time temporally resolved electric field measurements were realized. At small discharge current the electric field showed a significant modulation, characterized by incoherent fluctuations with a broadband Fourier spectrum. With increasing current the discharge operates in the T-mode, where a mode selection with high modulation degree occurred, resulting in a periodic oscillation of the electric field at a discrete frequency spectrum. The dynamic state in the T-mode is expressed by T-waves moving from the cathode to the anode. It seems that they were excited by oscillations in the cathode region. The waves were damped in the direction of the anode and show no dispersion. The discharge stability was studied using a hydrodynamic model considering electrons, positive and negative ions as well as metastable O(a Δ ) molecules. Here the negative O-ions play a crucial role. In good agreement with the experiments the transition between the H-and T-modes was explained as a linear unstable equilibrium state where the energy dependence of the corresponding rate coefficients is the driving mechanism (attachment-induced instability). © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd.