Kinetic Studies of Gas Mixtures and Their Application to Gas Lasers and Pollutant Detection

Abstract

A 2-meV proton beam with a 10-ns pulse width was used to excite various gas mixtures. The emitted vacuum ultraviolet (500 A to 2000 A) and ultraviolet-visible (2000 A to 8000 A) photons passing through separate monochromators were detected by using single photon counting techniques. Time-resolved and time-integrated fluorescent spectroscopy was used to study the detailed mechanism of excitation energy transfer, Penning ionization, charge transfer, and ion-ion recombination processes. The energy precursors of various excited species in a number of gas mixtures were identified, and the quenching rates of excited atoms and ions by numerous small molecules were measured. Relative fluorescence efficiencies and energy pathways of proton-excited gas mixtures were used to study the kinetics of high power gas lasers. An ultrasensitive method for the detection of certain pollutants utilizing energy or charge transfer processes in proton-excited gas mixtures has been developed.