Popis: |
Collisional-radiative recombination (CRR) of argon ions has been studied in the upstream region of a flowing-afterglow plasma. It is found that the recombination rate is accurately described by the CRR theory. In addition, the yield of metastable Ar( 3 P 2 ) and Ar( 3 P 0 ) atoms was determined by spectroscopic methods to be ∼35%, Ar( 3 P 2 ) being approximately six times more abundant than Ar( 3 P 0 ). The argon line spectrum produced by CRR consists largely of the near-infrared lines, belonging to 4p–4s and 4p ′ –4s ′ transitions. |