Comparisons of sets of electron-neutral scattering cross sections and swarm parameters in noble gases: I. Argon

This paper describes work done in the context of the Gaseous Electronics Conference (GEC) Plasma Data Exchange Project (PDEP) as discussed in the preface to this cluster issue. The purposes of this paper and its companion papers are to compare sets of cross sections for electron scattering from ground-state noble gas atoms in the energy range from thermal to about 1 keV and to comment on their applicability for plasma modelling. To these ends, we present in this paper intercomparisons of the nine independently derived sets of cross sections for electron scattering from ground-state argon atoms that have been posted in databases on the LXCat open-access website (www.lxcat.laplace.univ-tlse.fr). We show electron transport, excitation and ionization coefficients (swarm parameters) calculated using these cross section data in Boltzmann solvers and we compare calculated values with measurements. For the most part, the cross section sets have been compiled by co-authors on this paper and appendices giving details about how the various cross sections datasets were compiled have been written by the individual co-authors. Additional appendices discuss our criteria for selection of experimental data to be included in the comparisons and give a brief overview of the methods used here for solving the Boltzmann equation.