About the current flow in a discharge tube with a metal section. I-model of a conductive liquid

The work is devoted to the study of the current flow through a glass cylindrical discharge tube with a metal section. A hydrodynamic model of a one-component conductive liquid is considered. The parameters of the conductive liquid are set in accordance with the parameters of the discharge in neon at a pressure of 1 Torr and a current of 10 mA. It is shown that the presence of a metal section leads to a branching of the discharge current into a component flowing through the gas volume and a component flowing along the approximately equipotential metal surface. Two-dimensional distributions of the electric potential, electric field, and current density are obtained depending on the size of the metal section and the radius of the discharge tube. Based on the calculated electric field, the spatial distribution of excitation sources describing the emission of spectral lines and ionization is calculated. The occurrence of a space charge near the glass-metal interface is analysed.