Study of UV Ne II line shapes in the cathode sheath of an abnormal glow discharge

Abstract

We report results of an experimental and theoretical study of complex UV line shapes of Ne II 369.421 nm, Ne II 370.962 nm, Ne II 371.308 nm, and. Ne II 372.711 nm lines in the cathode sheath (CS) region of an abnormal DC glow discharge in pure neon. Two sets of experimental profiles and electric field distributions, one for discharge with tungsten and the other with titanium cathode, were obtained by means of the optical emission spectroscopy (OES) and theoretically studied by the iterative CS kinetic model. It is shown that our theoretical model enables the determination of the most important CS parameters (e.g. the thickness of the CS region, and the theoretical distributions of electric field and gas temperature) and thereupon based accurate theoretical predictions of the experimentally observed profiles of the studied lines.