UV continuum emission and diagnostics of hydrogen-containing non-equilibrium plasmas

Abstract

For the first time the emission of the radiative dissociation continuum of the hydrogen molecule ($a^3{\Sigma }_g^{+}\to b^3{\Sigma }_u^{+}$ electronic transition) is proposed to be used as a source of information for the spectroscopic diagnostics of non-equilibrium plasmas. The detailed analysis of excitation-deactivation kinetics, rate constants of various collisional and radiative transitions and fitting procedures made it possible to develop two new methods of diagnostics of: (1) the ground $X^1{\Sigma }_g^{+}$ state vibrational temperature $T_{\text{vib}}$ from the relative intensity distribution, and (2) the rate of electron impact dissociation $(d[\mbox{H$_{2}$}]/dt)_{\text{diss}}$ from the absolute intensity of the continuum. A known method of determination of $T_{\text{vib}}$ from relative intensities of Fulcher-$\alpha$ bands was seriously corrected and simplified due to the revision of $d\to a$ transition probabilities and cross sections of $d\leftarrow X$ electron impact excitation. General considerations are illustrated with examples of experiments in pure hydrogen capillary-arc and H${}_2$+Ar microwave discharges.

REVTeX, 25 pages + 12 figures + 9 tables. Phys. Rev. E, eprint replaced because of resubmission to journal after referee's 2nd report

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