Collisional-radiative modelling of a helium microwave plasma in a resonant cavity

A collisional-radiative model is proposed to describe the behaviour of a helium plasma sustained in a resonant cavity at atmospheric pressure. A set of rate constants is proposed at 2450 K. Indeed, most of the available data in the literature are reliable below 500 K. It is shown that the time post-discharge is mainly controlled by ambipolar diffusion during the first ten mu s, next by electron-assisted recombination of helium ions and finally by chemionization from the excited state. This post-discharge lasts for hundreds of mu s. It is mainly due to the slow recombination of electrons together with chemionization. Then, at steady state in CW mode, the electron temperature is found to be lower than 1 eV since low reduced fields are needed to sustain the discharge.