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Determining Metastable Ion Lifetime and History through Wave-Particle Interaction
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Determining Metastable Ion Lifetime and History through Wave-Particle Interaction

F. Chu and F. Skiff
Physical review letters, Vol.122(7), pp.075001-075001
02/22/2019
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.075001
PMID: 30848638
url
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.075001View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) performed on metastable ions is frequently used to probe the dynamics of ground-state ion motions in many laboratory plasmas. However, these measurements place restrictions on the metastable ion lifetime. Metastable states are produced from direct ionization of neutral atoms as well as ions in other electronic states, of which the former will only faithfully represent processes that act on the ion dynamics in a time shorter than the metastable lifetime. We present here the first experimental study of this type of systematic effect using wave-particle interaction in an argon multidipole plasma. The metastable lifetime and relative fraction of metastables produced from preexisting ions, necessary for correcting the LIF measurement errors, can be determined by fitting the experimental results with the theory we propose.
Physical Sciences Physics Physics, Multidisciplinary Science & Technology

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