Main-discharge formation and light emission in pure Ar gas at multi-atmospheric pressure using the automatically pre-ionized plasma electrode

For the investigation of the possibility of the discharge-pumped Ar2* excimer laser action, characteristics of the discharge and the light emission in multi-atmospheric (1-5 atm) pure Ar gas have been investigated using the API (automatically pre-ionized) plasma electrode. It was demonstrated that the uniform pre-ionization forms the uniform main-discharge by the control effect of capacitance C_pr and the maximum energy deposition was increased. The light emission characteristics were investigated by Ar atomic line and Ar ionic line. The intensity of the Ar ionic line at 427.8 nm increased proportionally to the approximate cubic of the Ar gas pressure but that of Ar atomic line at 696.9 nm saturated at pressure above 4 atm.