Collisional Excitation of Atomic Spectra in Accelerated Beams of Light Elements

The light emitted by high-speed particles produced by a Van de Graaff accelerator and excited by passage through a thin foil of carbon has been studied in the wavelength range 2700–6600 Å. Lines from deuterium, helium, nitrogen, and oxygen are presented including some that have not previously been reported. Qualitative observations are presented on the mean lives of the excited states and on the dependence of spectral line intensity upon particle energy.