Spectroscopy of He–Ne afterglow plasma

Abstract

The afterglow of pulsed low-current discharge in a He–Ne mixture is spectroscopically studied under conditions of competition between the processes of Ne₂⁺ and HeNe⁺ dissociative recombination with electrons, which are the sources of population of excited levels of neon atoms. The behavior of neon spectral lines in the wavelength range of 350–850 nm corresponding to the transitions from the levels of neon atoms of the 2p⁵3p, 2p⁵3d, 2p⁵4p, 2p⁵4d, 2p5⁵s, 2p⁵5d, 2p5⁶s configurations are studied by the multichannel photoncounting method at electron density n_e < 10¹¹ cm^–3 and helium and neon pressures P_He = 38 Torr and P_Ne ≈ 10^-5p_He Distributions of recombination fluxes and population over excited states of the neon atom formed in the afterglow by homo- and heteronuclear ions are found. The data obtained show that vibrationally excited molecular ions make no noticeable contribution to the spectrum of decaying He–Ne plasma.