Abstract :
In earlier papers a theory of space charges and their fluctuations was developed, in which it was tacitly assumed that the characteristic of a diode could be accurately expressed in terms of thirty differential coefficients of the characteristic. One of these, the slope conductance, was subsequently shown not to be measurable during a fluctuation event and to have a mean square value considerably greater than its squared mean value. In the present paper the effect of fluctuations in another of the differential coefficients is studied. As a result a serious error in all prior work on the subject has been located. Consequently, it is now possible to utilize the assumption that the total emission of the valve fluctuates according to the law derived by Schottky in 1918, and to obtain from this, not, as hitherto, a very severe underestimate of the fluctuations, but one that is much closer to the fluctuation observed experimentally.
