Comparison of a model for air fluorescence via electron beam excitation with experimental data

Air fluorescence is a process that is important in a variety of subject areas including sprites, plasmas, cosmic ray showers, and Teller light from nuclear detonations. In 1968, Davidson and O’Neil published the results of an experiment that measured fluorescence efficiencies from about 300 to 1000 nm. In this paper, we model an electron beam from first principles and compare our air fluorescence efficiency results to these measurements.