Determination of the Radial Profile of Absorption and Emission Coefficients and Temperature in Cylindrically Symmetric Sources with Self-Absorption

Abstract

The Abel inversion method of determining the radial profile of the volume emission coefficient in cylindrically symmetric sources is extended through an iteration technique to apply to sources which are not optically thin. An experiment is described in which this technique is applied to a low temperature plasma, and the radial profile of the volume emission and absorption coefficients are obtained. The ratios of these two profiles are used to obtain the temperature profile of the plasma using Kirchhoff’s law under the assumption of local thermodynamic equilibrium.