The development of inclined sparks in a track-following spark chamber

Abstract This paper describes a theoritical investigation into the phenomenon of electrical breakdown along particle trajectories in a wide gap spark chamber. The differential equations for ionization growth, written in a form which allows for the space-charge effects of a number of adjacent electron avalanches, are solved numerically using a second-order iterative method. The results show that the development of the inclined spark can be explained on the basis of known values of the primary ionization coefficient, electron drift velocity and diffusion coefficient. Some results for a single avalanche are also given for comparison.