Two-dimensional images of radiative and metastable excited state radial profiles for an inductively coupled plasma in argon

Inductively coupled plasma (ICP) was shown to be characterized by a substan tial degree of stepwise excitation due to a large density of metastable ato ms and an even larger population of electrons, The kinetics of metastables strongly affects the structure of the discharge and we have applied laser a bsorption spectroscopy to establish the density profile of argon metastable s Ar(1s(5)) in a single turn coil geometry. At the same time the radial pro files of the radiative Ar(3p(5)) state obtained by using a computer aided t omography are significantly different indicating the effect of electron ind uced quenching and stepwise processes in kinetics of the two states.