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Under typical operating conditions, the ALEXIS plasma is a very low temperature plasma. Usual electron temperatures are on the order of 1 to 5
electron-volts (eV). Currently, in order to characterize the plasma, a doubletipped Langmuir probe is used to measure an I-V trace, from which an analysis program extracts electron temperature and electron density. However,
the uncertainty in this temperature measurement is very large compared to
the actual temperature in the machine, perhaps a few eV in itself. For this
reason, the temperature measurements currently in place can only reliably
give ballpark estimates of the actual temperature.
Originally part of my Undergraduate Research Fellowship, we set out to
develop a noninvasive optical diagnostic in order to hopefully cut down on the
uncertainty of these measurements, and ultimately to be able to accurately
diagnose temperature and density from a simple spectrum.
The Plasma Science Lab has joined with Dr. Loch to theoretically model
the ALEXIS plasma and predict plasma conditions based on spectral line
ratios. From this theory, we hope to develop an algorithm that will compute
density and temperature when given a spectrum.
This project has met with its share of snags; most notably, the system
is much more complex than originally thought. However, we have in recent
weeks made good progress toward the end goal of a reliable measurement.
point, and if you analyze around that point, it will give erroneous temperature
measurements, because temperature is dependent upon the derivative of the
trace. There are two numbers in the VI backpanel that need to be changed
until the analysis gives reasonable numbers. These numbers represent the
range over which the trace is analyzed. Anomalously high temperature values
on the plot are indicative of this issue. Reasonable numbers are anywhere
from 1 to 5 eV; anything higher than that is probably wrong.
Dr. Loch has suggested the use of a program called xmgrace to fit the
density and temperature profiles. It is run on his linux machine, and it will
output coefficients to be used in the theoretical modelling code (see section
4).
However, measuring and fitting the data is the easy part. Figuring out
which lines to analyze is a process worthy of a few headaches. The first and
most important thing to do is to identify which lines correspond to which
atomic transition. This is not as simple as it might sound; in fact, it is
possibly the most confusing part. The atomic data currently available for
neutral argon is not J-resolved; that is, there can be multiple transitions
resulting from a single term described by the atomic codes used to mdoel the
system (see sec. 3).
So, in order to match up a ratio given by the modelling code, one may
need to add the strengths of multiple lines together. Not too daunting a
task in itself, but when it comes to notation, it is difficult to see which
is which. NIST, the primary database used as a wavelength reference for
line identification, uses a style of notation called L-K coupling, while the
ADAS codes output in simple L-S coupling. The ADAS codes are also not
J-resolved, so one must work out by hand the J values corresponding to each
term.
Matching up the NIST transitions to their terms in ADAS was a difficult
task, one I spent a long time hung up on. NIST lists five configurations
for the 4p levels, which are the ones we are primarily interested in. However,
ADAS gives six. Where each configuration in NIST has two Js associated
with it, ADAS has singlet and triplet terms. At first, I simply put them in
ascending energy order, splitting the one level in NIST that had a wide J-gap
into two to give six. However, it quickly became apparent that was not the
correct solutionour calculated ratios were outlandish. It also did not fix the
problem of the triplet states that were only assigned two Js.
It seems a simple step now, but this step alone will hopefully allow the
project to move forward much quicker than before. I noticed that, working
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the Js out by hand from the ADAS code gave ten total, the same number as the five doublets outputted by NIST. Furthermore, these values all
correspondedthree zeroes, four ones, two twos, and a three. It struck me to
place the NIST levels not in order by their terms, but by their [italics]energies,
and then I applied the ADAS terms to them in order, and I found that each
J matched up with the corresponding ADAS term. Table 1 contains each
transition as it is indexed in the ADAS output, as well as its corresponding
energies and wavelength given by NIST.
It is worth discussing the notation used in this table. The Levels column
lists the atomic terms in what is called LSJ notation, displaying each term in
terms of its angular momentum and spin in the form x yz where x is (2S+1)
with S being the total spin of the system, y is L, the total angular momentum,
and Z is J, a value that can range from L+S to L-S.
Certain changes in L, S, and J are considered allowed, while some are
considered forbidden by rules of quantum mechanics. These rules help determine which transitions are strong and which are weak. A good rule of
thumb is that if total spin, S, changes, then the transition is forbidden. L
can change by 0 or +/- 1, elsewise it is forbidden.
With the line intensities in hand, the last thing to consider is the time response scaling of the spectrometer. This is a tricky matter that has hindered
progress of this project significantly. ThorLabs seems reluctant to address
this issue at present, but hopefully we will one day get some resolution.
When increasing the exposure time of the spectrometer, one would expect
the number of photons striking the detector to increase linearly with time,
i.e. doubling the exposure time doubles the line intensity. However, in my
experience, this has not been the case. As near as I have been able to work
out, the intensity scales exponentially with time, to the power of something
between 2 and 2.5. Attempting to work this out was immensely frustrating,
and my suggestion to anyone working on this project is to badger ThorLabs
about it until they tell you.
Aside from the time scaling, spectrometers also have a varying response
over the length of the spectruman intensity of 0.5 at 500nm is not the same
as at 800nm. This problem was much simpler to solve, however, as there is
a response curve taken from ThorLabs website that gives spectral response
as a function of wavelength. I fitted it with a sixth-degree polynomial, the
coefficients of which are given below:
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Transition
4 to 2
5 to 2
6 to 2
7 to 2
8 to 2
9 to 2
4 to 3
5 to 3
6 to 3
7 to 3
8 to 3
9 to 3
Wavelength (nm)
912.30
965.78
1047.01
772.38
801.48
810.37
811.53
842.46
866.79
763.51
800.62
706.72
714.70
738.40
751.47
794.82
696.54
727.29
772.42
667.73
1148.81
935.42
978.45
922.45
840.82
852.14
826.45
750.39
Levels
3
S1 3 P2
3
S1 3 P1
3
S1 3 P0
3
D1 3 P2
3
D2 3 P2
3
D1 3 P1
3
D3 3 P2
3
D2 3 P1
3
D1 3 P0
1
D2 3 P2
1
D2 3 P1
3
P2 3 P2
3
P1 3 P2
3
P2 3 P1
3
P0 3 P1
3
P1 3 P0
1
P1 3 P2
1
P1 3 P1
1
P1 3 P0
1
S0 3 P1
3
S1 1 P1
3
D1 1 P1
3
D2 1 P1
1
D2 1 P1
3
P2 1 P1
3
P1 1 P1
1
P1 1 P1
1
S0 1 P1
Energies (cm1 )
104102 - 93143
104102 - 93750
104102 - 94553
106087 - 93143
105617 - 93143
106087 - 93750
105462 - 93143
105617 - 93750
106087 - 94553
106237 - 93143
106247 - 93750
107289 - 93143
107131 - 93143
107289 - 93750
107054 - 93750
107131 - 94553
107496 - 93143
107496 - 93750
107496 - 94553
108722 - 93750
104102 - 95399
106087 - 95399
105617 - 95399
106237 - 95399
107289 - 95399
107131 - 95399
107496 - 95399
108722 - 93570
malized intensities, I can then set about calculating ratios for a given set of
transitions.
In conjunction with Dr. Loch, I have developed a code written in the IDL
language that uses the ADAS suite of software to model the plasma system
with given parameters and computes the ratio of spectral lines given by the
user. The code has gone through several iterations as we add more and more
to the simulation. At first, we had assumed that the plasma was homogenous,
which, it became obvious, was not the case. Density and Temperature vary
radially along the plasma column; density by approximately a factor of 10
from the highest to lowest point (see fig. 3). Our optics, even if we were
to focus on a particular point, collects light from all along the radius of the
column, emission from locations of varying density and temperature. Plainly,
a homogenous system is not a good model for ALEXIS.
These measurements are obtained using the VIs discussed in section 2
above.
Our solution was to add a line of sight integration, using the double
probe data as a model for the shape of the density and temperature profiles.
The profiles appear to be approximately the sum of two Gaussians, so we
have fit the probe data to those functions and gathered a set of coefficients
for different magnetic field configurations on ALEXIS. From these, we pick
some number of points evenly spaced along the radius (dr) and integrate
over them. The ADAS code is run each time to compute a photon emissivity
coefficient array for that particular point, and these chunks are added up to
compute a total PEC for the entire plasma. This approximation gives much
more accurate results.
As discussed in Results below, it also became apparent that the systems
metastable population was not in equilibrium with the ground state. We have
added the capacity for metastable populations, but it is not fully known yet
what fraction of the population exists in the metastable state. For now, it
is assumed it is close to zero. Adding metastable data notably improved the
results as well.
The current version of the code (with metastables included) is named
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Results
Figure 4: Double-tip Langmuir probe measurements for electron temperature at two magnetic currents. These profles are fit with a double Gaussian
mirrored about the Y-axis: A0exp((x A1)/A2)2 + A3exp((x A4)/A5)2 +
A0exp((x + A1)/A2)2 + A3exp((x + A4)/A5)2
From there, we ran a different ADAS code, 406, which computes ion
population based on time. This showed that at the time scale relevant to
ALEXIS, the system was very far from equilibrium. On the order of 1 ms,
the plasma is almost completely neutral, with the Ar+ population fraction
between 106 and 104 , significantly different from the equilibrium calculation, but much more in line with what we saw from the spectra (see figure
5).
Still, one problem remained, even after computing the photon emissivity
coefficients with the plasma as containing only neutral argon. The program
output several lines between 400 and 500 nanometers that were supposedly
among the strongest lines, but these lines were not present at all on the
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As of this point, the results we have are far from satisfactory. Much
of my time has been spent developing codes and measurement techniques.
The data we do have does not match well with theory as of yet, but it is
improving.
Future Work
Work is currently being done to resolve the metastable populations. Accurately determining the metastable population will lead to better results from
the theoretical side.
The issue still remains, however, that the ADAS output suggests that
certain lines should be very strong, even when they are almost negligible.
The metastable population modelling may fix that problem, but if it does
not, it would be wise to try and create better atomic data. Neutral atoms
are notoriously hard to model, and the current data is not J-resolved when
the analysis is. The Auburn University AMO group has expressed interest
in making this data if needed.
Another issue is that the temperature we are feeding the ADAS code is
one we have measured with our probes. The problem is, the impetus for this
project was the lack of confidence in our temperature measurements. Therefore, the ADAS output may not be accurate to our real plasma conditions.
The fusion group at Auburn has recently acquired a spectrometer with
a range of 200-600 nm. It appears to be a higher-quality device than the
ALEXIS lab spectrometer. Its range, however, limits it to Ar+ lines, which
are very faint in ALEXIS. Still, it remains an option, as ionized Argon data
is much more reliable than neutral data.
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