Plasma Spectroscopy during High-Current Electric Explosions of Tungsten Wires in Vacuum

When studying the optical spectra arising from the electrical explosion of tungsten wires in a vacuum, several thousand spectral lines of W I and W II were recorded in the range of 450–912 nm. Among these lines, 118 spectral lines that are not contained in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) line database reference were reliably and reproducibly detected. Some of these lines (57 W II lines and 6 W I lines), with a deviation of no more than 0.01 nm, coincides with the W lines contained in the calculated line database created at the University of Mons, Belgium (DESIRE). To verify the detected lines, the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry initiated a study of the spectra of tungsten plasma in an arc discharge (in an argon or helium atmosphere) in the same spectral range. A group of 57 lines, which were not identified in the NIST and DESIRE spectral databases, were observed in both electric explosion and arc discharge spectra and therefore are highly likely to belong to W.