Interferometric Investigation of Line Shapes in the Spectra of Rare-Gas Afterglows

A search was made for line broadening in afterglows of krypton and neon. A previously reported case of dissociative recombination broadening in neon was observed. No other broadening due to recombination was found. Provided that momentum and excitation transfer is small, the absence of such broadening was interpreted as indicating that either the excited atoms are formed in upper atomic states or that the kinetic energy of dissociation is small for all atomic lines investigated.