Stark broadening measurements in plasmas produced by laser ablation of hydrogen containing compounds

We present a method for the measurement of Stark broadening parameters of atomic and ionic spectral lines based on laser ablation of hydrogen containing compounds. Therefore, plume emission spectra, recorded with an echelle spectrometer coupled to a gated detector, were compared to the spectral radiance of a plasma in local thermal equilibrium. Producing material ablation with ultraviolet nanosecond laser pulses in argon at near atmospheric pressure, the recordings take advantage of the spatially uniform distributions of electron density and temperature within the ablated vapor. By changing the delay between laser pulse and detector gate, the electron density could be varied by more than two orders of magnitude while the temperature was altered in the range from 6,000 to 14,000 K. The Stark broadening parameters of transitions were derived from their simultaneous observation with the hydrogen Balmer alpha line. In addition, assuming a linear increase of Stark widths and shifts with electron density for non-hydrogenic lines, our measurements indicate a change of the Stark broadening-dependence of H-alpha over the considered electron density range. The presented results obtained for hydrated calcium sulfate (CaSO4 center dot 2H(2)O) can be extended to any kind of hydrogen containing compounds. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.