On Thu, 6 Jul 2017 09:51:44 -0400, Phil Hobbs
wrote:

No, it's a coupled plasma/surface effect. It's really cool. It peaks
down around a few tenths of a millitorr, but it's still appreciable at
higher pressures.

According to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb
the gas pressure in a common light bulb is about 70 kPa or 525 torr.
That's quite a bit higher than a few tenths of a millitorr.

The light bulb thing was discovered by somebody turning on an
incandescent lamp and wiping out his reception.

I don't quite believe it. In the early daze of light bulb research,
it was wrongly assumed that a better vacuum produced a better light
bulb. So, early light bulbs had a fairly high vacuum, which might
explain the RF interference, except that radio hadn't really become
common at the time. Eventually, someone figure out that it was the
water in the glass that was killing the filaments. Once the water was
baked out of the glass, subsequent light bulbs had a much lower
vacuum.

I don't know if the pressure in the transient suppressor is low enough
for Barkhausen--if not, it's probably the neon bulb oscillation as
others have said.

I don't think that the ceramic gas discharge tubes have a vacuum. More
like they are under pressure in order to lower the conduction current.
However, I'm guessing and don't have time to look it up right now.

Cheers
Phil Hobbs

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