Abstract
Further studies have been made of long magnetically-confined vacuum carbon arcs in order to elucidate a previously proposed energy-pumping mechanism called `excitation-heating', explaining a drastic departure from thermodynamic equilibrium (Ti ~ 100 Te). The ion densities of C2+ and the metastable C2+* on which the mechanism depends, as well as of C3+, were measured by vacuum ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy, and the results support the concept of excitation-heating. Mass spectrometric studies of the arc periphery also showed C2+ and C3+ as the dominant ions. The Massey-Hasted adiabatic maximum criterion and the theory of Rydnik and Yavorskii are applied to the near-resonance intermediate reaction step C2+* + C2+* → C2+ + C2+ + 0.29 eV (→C2+ + C2+ + 13.0 eV) and predict the large reaction cross section at fairly low collisional energies needed by the excitation-heating process.
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