Progress in spectroscopic diagnostics of barrier discharges

Systematic study of barrier discharges (BDs) using cross-correlation spectroscopy (CCS) has been conducted since 2000 by two research teams at the universities in Moscow and in Greifswald. From the beginning, the investigations were focused on the application of the CCS diagnostics to the BDs in air and in N-2/O-2 mixtures. Further progress in the research field being considered was aimed on the one hand, at the improvement of the measurement technique and development of the data processing procedures, and on the other hand, at using different working gases and gas mixtures. In this paper, the most interesting and important research results obtained in the course of two last years at both referred above universities using the CCS technique are reported. They correspond to three different subjects of investigation, namely an analysis of axial and radial structure of the microdischrge in air at ambient pressure, an influence of the composition of binary mixtures Ne/O-2 upon the mechanism of the BD development, and spatio-temporal structure of the BD in pure argon.