HEATING OF GAS UNDER CONDITIONS OF FREE-LOCALIZED MICROWAVE-DISCHARGEIN AIR - EXPERIMENT

The paper deals with the investigation of the kinetics of heating of a molecular gas in a nonequilibrium plasma of a microwave discharge loc alized in free space, the discharge being produced by a powerful focus ed beam of electromagnetic energy. The experimental results are compar ed with the data of mathematical simulation using the unsteady-state k inetic model of discharge in dry air. It is shown that, at high values of the reduced electric field in plasma (E/n 2 100 Td), one of the ma in mechanisms for heating gas consists in effective excitation of the electronic states of molecules, followed by their extinction via diffe rent channels and transfer of a part of the excitation energy to trans lational degrees of freedom of molecules.