Comparison of Procedures for Obtaining Electron Transport Properties by Traditional and Flight Time Integral Methods

Abstract

Procedures for obtaining the transport properties of electrons in gas under a uniform electric field by traditional methods are compared with those by the flight time integral (FTI) method such that they conform to the two comment papers on the FTI method given by Kumar and Robson in 1995. The most important difference between traditional and FTI methods is that the starting rate distribution Ψ_s(v₀) is adopted in FTI as the principal unknown function instead of the velocity distribution in flight f(c), which has always been used in traditional theories. The use of Ψ_s(v₀) has advantages not only in the possibility of obtaining accurate transport coefficients but also in providing a deeper understanding of them based on the full flight data of electrons.