## 5 Conclusions  
The main objective of this work has been to experimentally determine the influence of different operating conditions, i.e., pulse frequencies and pulse current amplitudes, on the relevant plasma parameters, in particular the electron number density and the electron temperature of a pulsed low-current, high-voltage discharge operated at atmospheric pressure. No information on these values could be found in published works so far. According to these results, depending on the operating frequency, an electron density between \(1.7\times 10^{21}\) m\({}^{-3}\) and \(2.0\times 10^{21}\) m\({}^{-3}\) with electron temperatures in the range of 40,000 K can be expected for a pure nitrogen discharge operated at atmospheric pressure. A heavy particle temperature of about 6000 K is reached in the core of the discharge channel, with the values decreasing further downstream on the axis of the effluent plasma jet from 4000 K to 2000 K at typical treatment distances of 10-15 mm from the nozzle outlet. Due to the complex nature of the de-excitation processes of nitrogen, relatively slow electron recombination rates are observed, and thus the once ionized channel does not extinguish between consecutive pulses at the considered pulse frequencies of 43 kHz and 60 kHz but rather undergoes a transition from a glow discharge to a spark with each current pulse. The observed influence of the temporal changes of the excitation current on the estimated plasma parameters is slightly less than 20%. Based on the obtained findings, the hypothesis that the temperature of heavy particles is determined by dissipated power, while the electron parameters, and therefore, to some extent, the chemical reactivity of the plasma, are defined by the shape of the excitation pulse could be confirmed for this type of discharge. Furthermore, a coupling of the pulse shape and frequency with the resulting plasma properties is now possible.  
In conclusion, the results obtained in this work contribute significantly to the understanding of pulsed low-current discharges operated at atmospheric pressure. The presented results facilitate the development and validation of a computational model, which can be based on one of the existing works [26; 30; 32] and may provide a more accurate chemical description of the plasma composition. With this knowledge, such discharges can be better adapted to specific applications in industrial or experimental environments, such as chemical vapor deposition, the plasma-activation of liquids, CO\({}_{2}\) reforming, or, in general, applications with more stringent plasma chemistry requirements.  
Conceptualization, M.S., G.F. and J.S.; methodology, M.S., G.F. and J.-L.M.-L.; software, M.S. and G.F.; validation, M.S. and J.-L.M.-L.; formal analysis, [PERSON]-L.M.-L. and J.S.; investigation, M.S.; resources, M.S. and G.F.; data curation, M.S., G.F. and J.-L.M.-L.; writing--original draft preparation, M.S.; writing--review and editing, J.-L.M.-L. and J.S.; visualization, M.S.; supervision, J.S.; project administration, M.S.; funding acquisition, J.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This research received no external funding.  
Not applicable.  
The publication of this manuscript was financially supported by Universitat der Bundeswehr Munchen. The authors declare no conflict of interest.