On the hunt for articles
When I was working on my diploma project, finding information was not a big issue. The thing was that I was working with measurement of femto- and attosecond laser pulses, which is a large field in atomic physics. Ergo: Much had already been written on the subject, and if you were looking for a review article about the latest attosecond pulse-characterization algorithm, you almost stumbled upon one instantaneously.
That was good.
Now, when doing my PhD, the situation is not as good as it was a couple of years ago. Atomic physics in combination with fluorescent tubes does not seem to attract as much excitement and interest as ultrafast laser physics. (I have no idea of why fluorescent lamps is not regarded as as sexy as attosecond pulse trains. But I am not bitter about that, not at all. Mrghhhgflgh. Uhm, where was I?) This leads obviously to lesser articles on the subject, making it harder to dig up anything useful. Of course, we have Waymouth’s “Electric Discharge Lamps”, but it does not go that deep into exotic atomic physics and was written over 35 years ago. Yes, I know that the aim of my PhD studies is not just to find information about experiments already done, but to produce new knowledge. However, I am not interested in reinventing the wheel, so I feel I need as much information about previous experiments and theories as possible.
Anyways, since I have been somewhat ill today, I have been at home. This has given me the opportunity to search the net for some information, without having to bother about doing other things like teaching, meddling around in the lab, and so on. And I have actually found a few more or less useful articles. Also, most of them I had never seen before, which is a plus. (I have a tendency to forget about the existence of articles which I have found in the past, which is somewhat of a minus.) Here is a list of articles which in different ways might to be relevant to my work:
G. G. Lister et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 76, 541 (2004)
R. C. Wamsley et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 57, 2416 (1990)
R. C. Wamsley et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 59, 2947 (1991)
R. C. Wamsley et al. Phys. Rev. E 47, 3540 (1993)
Especially the first (a nice review of the subject which hopefully can lead my to other good sources of information) and the last I find interesting. The focus of the last article is actually almost exactly the same as what my current project is about: Penning ionization in the plasma of a fluorescent tube. Yesss.
