Collisional ionization dynamics of the excited state of neon in a gas discharge plasma via time-resolved optogalvanic spectroscopy

Summary form only given. Optogalvanic (OG) spectroscopy is a method that detects changes in the energies of atoms or molecules caused by variations in optically-induced currents. Whenever the wavelength of a laser coincides with the absorption of an atomic or molecular species in a plasma, the rate of ionization of the species momentarily increases or decreases due to laser-assisted acceleration of collisional ionization. The change in ionization rate is monitored as a variation in the transient current when a high voltage electrode is inserted into the plasma. In the work, a record of the time-resolved optogalvanic waveform helped identify the dominant physical processes and provided quantitative information on the rates of the excited state collisional processes.