Towards higher stability of resonant absorption measurements in pulsed plasmas

Possible ways to increase the reliability of time-resolved particle density measurements in pulsed gaseous discharges using resonant absorption spectroscopy are proposed. A special synchronization, called "dynamic source triggering," between a gated detector and two pulsed discharges, one representing the discharge of interest and another being used as a reference source, is developed. An internal digital delay generator in the intensified charge coupled device camera, used at the same time as a detector, is utilized for this purpose. According to the proposed scheme, the light pulses from the reference source follow the gates of detector, passing through the discharge of interest only when necessary. This allows for the utilization of short-pulse plasmas as reference sources, which is critical for time-resolved absorption analysis of strongly emitting pulsed discharges. In addition to dynamic source triggering, the reliability of absorption measurements can be further increased using simultaneous detection of spectra relevant for absorption method, which is also demonstrated in this work. The proposed methods are illustrated by the time-resolved measurements of the metal atom density in a high-power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS) discharge, using either a hollow cathode lamp or another HiPIMS discharge as a pulsed reference source.