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Updated: Jun 27, 2026

Non-equilibrium Microwave Plasma for Efficient High Temperature Chemistry
Published on: August 1, 2017
Method to estimate the electron temperature and neutral density in a plasma from spectroscopic measurements using
Ella M Sciamma1, Roger D Bengtson, W L Rowan
1The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station Austin, Texas 78712, USA.
Abstract:
We present a method to infer the electron temperature in argon plasmas using a collisional-radiative model for argon ions and measurements of electron density to interpret absolutely calibrated spectroscopic measurements of argon ion (Ar II) line intensities. The neutral density, and hence the degree of ionization of this plasma, can then be estimated using argon atom (Ar I) line intensities and a collisional-radiative model for argon atoms. This method has been tested for plasmas generated on two different devices at the University of Texas at Austin: the helicon experiment and the helimak experiment. We present results that show good correlation with other measurements in the plasma.
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