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Selected Works

Plasma and Beam Physics

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2015

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Full-Text Articles in Physics

Abrupt Change In Neon Discharge Plasma Detected Through Optogalvanic Effects, Xianming Han, Michael Blosser, Prabhakar Misra, Haridass Chandran Oct 2015

Abrupt Change In Neon Discharge Plasma Detected Through Optogalvanic Effects, Xianming Han, Michael Blosser, Prabhakar Misra, Haridass Chandran

Xianming Han

When a laser is tuned between two excited energy levels of a gas in a Direct Current discharge lamp, the discharge current will experience a temporary disturbance lasting tens or hundreds of microseconds known as the optogalvanic effect. We have carried out extensive studies of optogalvanic effects in neon discharge plasmas for transitions at 621.7 nm, 630.5 nm, 638.3 nm, 650.7 nm and 659.9 nm. A nonlinear least-squares Monte Carlo technique has been used to determine the relevant amplitude coefficients, decay rates and the instrumental time constant. We discovered an abrupt change in the neon discharge plasma at a discharge …


Collisional Ionization Of Excited State Neon In A Gas Discharge Plasma, Xianming Han, Verl Wiseheart, Scott Conner, Meng-Chih Su, David Monts Oct 2015

Collisional Ionization Of Excited State Neon In A Gas Discharge Plasma, Xianming Han, Verl Wiseheart, Scott Conner, Meng-Chih Su, David Monts

Xianming Han

We report the first case where it is possible to clearly identify and quantitatively characterize the dominant physical processes contributing to production of the optogalvanic effect (OGE) signal in a discharge plasma. This work concentrates on the simplest case where only two states are involved in the optical transition. The theoretical model with only four parameters is in excellent agreement with the experimentally obtained time-resolved OGE waveforms. The collisional ionization rate in the upper state is twice as fast as that in the lower state although the two states are only separated by 1.94 eV. We conclude that the optogalvanic …