Spectroscopic investigation of multiple Boltzmann distributions of argon atomic and ionic excited states in an expanding H20-Ar dc-arc jet

It has been shown for several years that even in non-LTE hot plasmas, the atomic processes tend to establish the Boltzmann distribution of level populations within each electronic configuration. In this contribution we study population distributions of argon atomic and ionic excited states in the supersonic part of an expanding H20-Ar dc-arc plasma jet by optical emission spectroscopy. The excitation temperatures are obtained from Arl (13.1-15.3 eV) and Aril Boltzmann (19.2-22.5 eV) diagrams. The ionization temperature is obtained from the intensity ratio of argon ionic and atomic lines, using electron number density calculated from the Stark broadening of hydrogen Hp line and Saha equation.