Optical emission spectroscopy measurements of hydrogen and argon plasmas at high resolution

PANDORA (Plasma for Astrophysics, Nuclear Decays Observation and Radiation for Archaeometry) is an experiment aimed at studying β plasma decays. As part of this experiment, it is necessary to implement a multi-diagnostic system that includes the Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES). PANDORA will operate with plasmas formed by a mixture of light elements (H, Ne, Ar) and heavy elements (94Nb, 134Cs, 176Lu). At Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare - Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (INFN-LNS), a line of activities on the OES has been launched since 2015, progressively increasing the spectral resolution from R = λ/Δλ = 250 to R = 14.000, which allowed to characterize plasmas of hydrogen and argon measuring density and electronic temperature, atomic/molecular abundances (H/H2) and rotovibrational temperatures of the H2 molecule.