Measurement of Density Distribution of Metastable He Atom in a Plane-Parallel Hollow Cathode He Plasma

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Abstract
The density distribution of the singlet metastable He atom in a plane-parallel hollow cathode plasma was measured by the laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) method along with the absorption method, where the alignment of the atom excited by the linearly polarized laser light, the self-absorption of the fluorescence light by the 21S atom in the plasma and the effect of the atomic collisions as well as the electronic ones were considered. The alignment is demonstrated to play important roles in the determination of distribution of the metastable He atom density in a glow plasma with the electron density of (2.0±0.5)×1011 cm-3, temperature of 1.3 eV and gas pressure of 0.7 Torr. Applicability of a simplified model used for the analysis of the present experiment was also discussed.