Emission of fast non-Maxwellian hydrogen atoms in low-density laboratory plasma

摘要

The source of strong and broad emission of the Balmer-α line in mixed plasmas of hydrogen (or deuterium) and noble gases in front of metallic surfaces is a subject of controversial discussion of many plasma types. In this work the excitation source of the Balmer lines is investigated by means of optical emission spectroscopy in the plasma device PSI-2. Neutral fast non-Maxwellian hydrogen atoms are produced by acceleration of hydrogen ions towards an electrode immersed into the plasma. By variation of the electrode potential the energy of ions and in turn of reflected fast atoms can be varied in the range of 40−300 eV. The fast atoms in front of the electrode are observed simultaneously by an Echelle spectrometer (0.001 nm/channel) and by an imaging spectrometer (0.01 nm/channel) up to few cm in the plasma. Intense excitation channels of the Balmer lines are observed when hydrogen is mixed with argon or with krypton. Especially in Ar-H and Ar-D mixed plasmas the emission of fast hydrogen atoms is very strong. Intermixing hydrogen with other noble gases (He, Ne or Xe) one observes the same effect however the emission is one order of magnitude less compared to Kr-H or Kr-D plasmas. It is shown, that the key process, impacting this emission, is the binary collision between the fast neutral hydrogen atom and the noble gas atom. Two possible sources of excitation are discussed in details: one is the excitation of hydrogen atoms by argon atoms in the ground state and the second one is the process of the so-called excitation transfer between the metastable states of noble gases and hydrogen. In the latter case the atomic data for excitation of Balmer lines are still not available in literature. Further experimental investigations are required to conclude on the source process of fast atom emission.