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Using electronic ballasts, the current frequency is boosted up to 60 kHz in some models. Does the fluorescent lamp continue to flicker at that frequency or does it produce continuous light?

In this wikipedia page it is mentioned that:

Fluorescent lamps using high-frequency electronic ballasts do not produce visible light flicker, since above about 5 kHz, the excited electron state half-life is longer than a half cycle and light production becomes continuous.

But no citation to confirm this fact. Can anybody confirm/deny this with an explanation of that electron state half-life in that case?

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The obvious Google search finds various articles on the subject, including this one that has a graph of excitation lifetime against temperature:

Excitation lifetimes

The lifetimes vary from about 600$\mu$s to about 3ms, so a 5 kHz signal (200$\mu$s) would indeed appear steady.

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  • $\begingroup$ The wikipedia article says : since above about 5 kHz, the excited electron state half-life is longer than a half cycle. In your example the lifetime is way shorter than a half cycle. I am confused. $\endgroup$
    – Mehdi
    Jul 3, 2015 at 14:39
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    $\begingroup$ @Mehdi: oops, that's a typo. At 5hKz one half cycle is 100$\mu$s (I originally wrote ms instead of $\mu$s) and all the lifetimes are consirably greater than this. $\endgroup$ Jul 3, 2015 at 14:41

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