Effective ionization coefficient of nitrogen including metastable molecules

The authors have studied the mechanism of current variation with time for a negative point to plane corona gap in nitrogen rich condition. It has been deduced that the variation depends on density of metastable molecules of nitrogen. Those molecules have high potential energy and long life time. Thus, it may affect a magnitude of ionization coefficient: α_eff. In this report, a magnitude of α_eff of nitrogen including metastable molecules was measured. From the results, its value increased with density of metastable molecules