Infrared absorption in dense sodium vapor

Abstract

The absorption spectra of a dense resonance medium were experimentally studied for the example of thermally heated dense sodium vapor. Several mechanisms that might cause substantial absorption and enhanced intensity of emission in the IR spectral region, λ τ; 0.9 μm, were considered. For the first time, a detailed study of the structure of the absorption spectra of sodium vapor in the specified wavelength range was performed to determine the influence of the kind and pressure of the buffer gas. It was found that buffer gas characteristics had a substantial effect on the absorption coefficient of vapor. The presence of the molecular component (dimers and trimers) in sodium vapor could not explain the experimental dependences of absorption in the infrared region. Possible influence of microparticles formed in condensation of convective sodium vapor flows in heated cells on the optical properties of vapor was considered. Microparticles could contribute to the observed absorption, but were incapable of explaining the substantial intensity of vapor radiation reported earlier. Possible many-particle effects on the absorption in the far spectral line wing were discussed. For the first time, the method of molecular dynamics was used to show for the example of the distribution function of ionic microfields in a dense plasma that such effects were in principle capable of substantially raising the profile of the line and increasing absorption in the region of large detunings from the resonance compared with the simple quasi-static model in the nearest-neighbor approximation.