Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
Gas excitation involves the emission of light by a chemical element present as a gas or vapour. When a gas such as neon or a vaporized element such as sodium or mercury is excited electrically, the electrical energy raises the atoms into high energy states, from which they decay back to ground state with the emission of photons. This leads to the red light seen in neon tubes and the yellow and...
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