Extreme Ultraviolet Emission from Laser-Induced Plasma During Atomic Oxygen Tests

摘要

One of the purposes of ground-based space environmental studies is to predict the erosion properties of materials used in space missions before launch. To obtain quantitative agreement between the ground-based prediction and the actual erosion in space, an understanding of the environment both in space and in the ground-based experiments is important. Ground-based tests involving atomic-oxygen-induced erosion, which are intended to simulate the neutral gas environment in low Earth orbit, often result in disagreement between ground-based data and space data for certain materials. This disagreement is due to differences in the atomic oxygen test environments in space and in the laboratory. We need to consider not only atomic oxygen but also side products (such as ions or photons) produced in a laser-detonation atomic oxygen beam source, which has been used for many atomic oxygen ground-based simulation studies. It has been reported that laser-detonation atomic oxygen sources emit ultraviolet light; however, these measurements have been carried out only in a wavelength range longer than 100 nm [1].