Thermal inequilibrium of atmospheric helium microwave plasma produced by an axial injection torch

The population density of several excited states has been obtained spectroscopically in a helium plasma sustained by a torch device at atmospheric pressure as a function of the radius in the plasma for different conditions of microwave power and plasma gas flow. The ground-state atom density is determined from the gas temperature, which is deduced from the rotational temperature of the molecular nitrogen ions. The population distribution is fitted to the theoretical results of a collisional-radiative model that includes particle transport. A large deviation of the measured populations is found from the theoretical populations for local thermodynamic equilibrium. The plasma at any radial position is far from local thermodynamic equilibrium; the equilibrium deviation parameter of the ground state is larger than 10 000. The equilibrium deviation parameters of the measured excited-state populations obey the theoretical p(k)(-6) exponential law. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.