AbstractOn the basis of the realistic argon atom model consisting of 65 discrete effective levels numerical results for the collisional‐radiative volume recombination, ionization and decay coefficients are obtained. The computations are carried out without any approximations of integral functions. The presented comparison of theoretical and experimental results for the decay coefficient shows that the values calculated by us are in much better agreement with experimental values than those obtained by Desai and Corcoran on the assumption that the argon atom is hydrogen‐l