Kinetic study of the VUV emissions of nitrogen from 1 Torr to atmospheric pressure: Highlight of a strong coupling between lowest singlet states

Temporal measurements of nitrogen VUV emissions have been performed for the first time from 1 Torr to atmospheric pressure. For the binary collision rate constant associated to the decay of a 1 Π g state, we have found a new value which is attributed to the a 1 Π g ↔ w 1 Δ u strong coupling. Moreover a zero-dimension kinetic model has been used in order to choose among different kinetic schemes proposed in literature the one which best describes our measured excited states temporal evolution.