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THz Pulse Spectroscopy of Dynamic Plasmas: A New Diagnostic Tool

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2011

Brian H. Kolner
Brian H. Kolner*
Affiliation:
bhkolner@ucdavis.edu, University of California, Davis, Applied Science, Davis, California, United States
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Abstract

Rapidly evolving plasmas represent a challenging environment for both study and control. Density, collision frequency and temperature fluctuations can change over orders of magnitude on time scales of one ns with spatial features less than one cm and thus are not amenable to conventional continuous-wave diagnostic techniques such as microwave or mm-wave interferometry. We have developed a new technique for studying plasmas undergoing rapid nonequilibrium changes that uses THz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) in conjunction with optical fluorescence imaging. The advantages of using THz pulses lie in the fact that the broad bandwidth of a THz pulse contains frequency components both above and below the plasma frequency allowing a single ps-duration pulse to carry away information about the complex path-integrated susceptibility. Transverse fluorescence gives us a model of the longitudinal plasma distribution and using a novel rms error-minimization technique we can recover the real and imaginary parts of the susceptibility with <5 mm spatial and, potentially, ps time resolution (we are currently limited by S/N considerations to averaging over several THz pulses and thus obtain 40 ns resolution). From this we obtain the electron density and collision frequency, spatially and temporally resolved, with dynamic range >103. The principle of this new technique will be discussed along with results on a pulsed DC-discharge plasma. We will also present some new ideas such as concurrent molecular spectroscopy and computed tomography.

Keywords

plasma depositionlaserinfrared (IR) spectroscopy
Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 1163: Symposium K – Materials Research for Terahertz Technology Development , 2009 , 1163-K09-03
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2009

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