Regular Article

Simultaneous influence of Stark effect and excessive line broadening on the H_α line^★

¹ University of Belgrade, Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering, Vojvode, Stepe 305, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
² University of Belgrade, Faculty of Physics, PO Box 368, 11001 Belgrade, Serbia

^a e-mail: nikola@ff.bg.ac.rs

Received: 21 May 2017
Received in final form: 17 September 2017
Published online: 7 December 2017

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the combined influence of the Stark effect and the excessive Doppler broadening on the Balmer alpha line in hydrogen discharges. Since this line is a good candidate for measuring electric field in various types of discharges with different gas compositions, a simple method for field measurement based on polarization spectroscopy is developed, that includes all the excitation mechanisms. To simultaneously test the flexibility of the fitting procedure and investigate the excessive broadening, we applied the fitting procedure on line profiles obtained at a range of conditions from two different discharges. The range of pressures and voltages was examined in an abnormal glow and in dielectric barrier discharge operating with hydrogen gas. The model fitting function was able to respond and follow the change in the line profile caused by the change of conditions. This procedure can therefore be recommended for electric field measurement.