N. Claire et al., Nonlinear optical tagging diagnostic for the measurement of Fokker-Planck diffusion and electric fields, REV SCI INS, 72(12), 2001, pp. 4372-4376
Strong optical pumping of ions can result after a few microseconds of reson
ance excitation in a laser beam. However, both Fokker-Planck diffusion and
acceleration due to macroscopic electric fields can remove an ion from reso
nance by changing the ion velocity on a similar timescale. Therefore, the t
ime dependence of laser induced fluorescence can be influenced by particle
acceleration and velocity-space diffusion. This effect which has already be
en used to measured Fokker-Planck diffusion, is extended to include the inf
luence of an electric field and used to measure the electric field associat
ed with an electrostatic shock in a multipolar gas discharge. (C) 2001 Amer
ican Institute of Physics.