Use of multiwavelength emission from hollow cathode lamp for measurement of state resolved atom density of metal vapor produced by electron beam evaporation

State resolved atom population of metal vapor having low-lying metastable states departs from equilibrium value. It needs to be experimentally investigated. This paper reports the use of hollow cathode lamp based atomic absorption spectroscopy technique to measure online the state resolved atom density (ground and metastable) of metal vapor in an atomic beam produced by a high power electron gun. In particular, the advantage of availability of multiwavelength emission in hollow cathode lamp is used to determine the atom density in different states. Here, several transitions pertaining to a given state have also been invoked to obtain the mean value of atom density thereby providing an opportunity for in situ averaging. It is observed that at higher source temperatures the atoms from metastable state relax to the ground state. This is ascribed to competing processes of atom-atom and electron-atom collisions. The formation of collision induced virtual source is inferred from measurement of atom density distribution profile along the width of the atomic beam. The total line-of-sight average atom density measured by absorption technique using hollow cathode lamp is compared to that measured by atomic vapor deposition method. The presence of collisions is further supported by determination of beaming exponent by numerically fitting the data. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics. [DOI: 10.1063/1.2987689]