Some Properties of Argon as an Actinometric Atom. I. Metastable Levels Excitation

Using argon as an actinometric atom requires knowledge of its electron excitation kinetics. In turn, this kinetics is largely determined by electron impact excitation cross-sections as well as quenching rate constants for the argon metastable levels. Unfortunately, the published experimental data for these cross-sections differ both in their magnitude and in the type of energy dependence. We have shown that if we exclude the first point from the 2004 data sets, then the cross sections normalized at the 20 eV point can be fairly well approximated by well-known fitting formulas.