Penning ionization of cesium by photoexcited mercury as a volumetric source of high-density plasma

Summary form only given. The efficient ionization of large volumes of gas leads to many applications that include materials processing, toxic gas remediation, MHD energy production, and others that affect military systems. We are studying efficient ways to develop high density plasmas and have identified Penning ionization as a potentially useful mechanism. In particular, the Penning ionization of cesium by metastable mercury appears to be very promising because of the favorable energetics of producing metastable mercury atoms that have electronic energies lying above the ionization potential of cesium. We are modeling the kinetics of the system, including the effects of buffer gases and molecular quenching gases. The reactions are used as input to a zero-dimensional chemical kinetics code, OLCHEM, which has been developed over the years to model a variety of chemical systems. This code integrates in time the kinetic equations and runs until steady state is achieved. The densities of all species, including specific excited-state atoms, molecules and photons that are treated as separate species, are plotted versus time.