The near-anode region of the quasi-neutral plasma of a low-current glow discharge in neon

The authors detect experimentally the distortion of the electron distribution function in the near-anode region of a quasi-neutral plasma of length ε1/eE (ε1 is the first excitation potential, E is the field in the positive column). This distortion is due to the sinking of electrons to the anode and shows up as a deficit of slow electrons which increases one approaches the anode. In the high energy region the distribution is not distorted, so that the plasma emission here is visually uniform. The results agree with kinetic calculations