New methods to determine temperatures from UV OH spectrum

Abstract

In this paper, the UV spectrum of the OH radical (transition A 2Σ → X 2Π) is used to find easy and reliable methods to measure both rotational and vibrational temperatures. A numerical simulation is developed to compute synthetic OH spectra between 300 and 330 nm with a normalization on a lines group called Gref, located at 309 nm. A large number of spectra are computed with different temperatures and global apparatus functions, a quantity which contains all the line broadening sources. Their study allows us to show that amplitude of some 0–0 band's line groups and global apparatus functions or Gref widths are usable to carry out the rotational temperature. Moreover, it is proved that vibrational temperature is accessible through the mean spectrum value of a part of the 1–1 band. To overcome the difficulty of finding the part where the spectrum mean value is evaluated, the authors propose to work with multiples of ‘on spectrum accessible lengths’. Abacuses are presented to connect each quantity of interest to temperatures. Finally, proposed methods are checked first experimentally on an oxy-acetylene torch and then on spectra produced with the LIFBASE software.