Crater effects on H and D emission from laser induced low-pressure helium plasma

Abstract

An experimental study has been performed on the effects of crater depth on the hydrogen and deuterium emission intensities measured from laser plasmas generated in low-pressure helium ambient gas from zircaloy-4 samples doped with different H and D impurity concentrations as well as a standard brass sample for comparison. The results show that aside from emission of the host atom, the emission intensities of other ablated atoms of significantly smaller masses as well as that of the He atom generally exhibit relatively rapid initial decline with increasing crater depth. This trend was found to have its origin in the decreasing laser power density arriving at the crater bottom and thereby weakened the shock wave generated in the crater. As the crater deepened, the declining trend of the intensity appeared to level off as a result of compensation of the decreasing laser power density by the enhanced plasma confinement at increasing crater depth. Meanwhile, the result also reveals the significant contribution of the He-assisted excitation process to the doped hydrogen and deuterium emission intensities, leading to similar crater-depth dependent variation patterns in contrast to that associated with the surface water, with growing dominance of this common feature at the later stage of the plasma expansion. Therefore, a carefully chosen set of gate delay and gate width which are properly adapted to the crater-depth dependent behavior of the emission intensity may produce the desired intrinsic emission data for quantitative depth profiling of H impurity trapped inside the zircaloy wall.