Institute of Fundamental Technological Research

The decay of the high pressure (7, 19 bar) optical discharge argon plasma is studied experimentally and theoretically. Time resolved spatial distributions of electron temperature and density have been measured spectroscopically giving the maximum values Te ≈ 1500 and Ne ≈ 8 × 1017 cm-3. The characteristic time of the decay is of the order of 10-4s. The experimental results are compared with the calculations based on the solution of the simplified energy equation in the spherically symmetric case. The kinematic and diffusion terms are neglected in the energy balance. It is found that radiation and thermal conduction are the dominant energy loss mechanisms during the decay process.