Chapter V the breakdown of dielectrics

The 4th volume of Progress in Dielectrics¹ was published in 1962 and this contained a very useful article by Dakin and Berg on the theory of gas breakdown.The important basic processes and breakdown mechanisms were discussed and attention was directed to conditions of technical importance. The article included important references to the literature published up to 1960. Radiative and collision processes involving atoms and molecules have been examined in some detail in a book under the editorship of Bates². Of particular interest is a chapter on attachment and ionization coefficients by Prasad and Craggs³.