Late-Time Source of Atomic Light in the Helium Afterglow

The time-dependent behavior of the light emitted from a pulsed helium afterglow at 3 Torr has been investigated with an improved spectrometric system of sufficient sensitivity-bandwidth ratio to resolve the behavior of the atomic light over a 50-msec time interval. The relationship between the atomic light and the time-resolved electron density, as measured with a 36-GHz free-space microwave interferometer, was found to indicate the importance of a persistent source of ionization at late times. Absorption measurements of time-dependent behavior of both the atomic 2³S and molecular 2³Σ metastable species were found to strongly favor mutual ionization of two metastable molecules as being the most important source of late-time ionization at 3 Torr.