Diagnostics of laser induced plasmas at late delay times

Abstract

The study of the diagnostics of plasmas produced by a laser is not always possible without enough data; usually a precise record of several lines meeting certain spectroscopic conditions is needed. In this work, a method for diagnosing plasmas was implemented at sufficiently late postbreakdown times, where it is no longer possible to apply known methods (e.g. Boltzmann plot for the estimation of kT), through an iterative algorithm that uses the parameters obtained by traditional methods at early times (LIBS typical delay time) and a minimum number of lines visible at the late times. Using the late times that are typical to the plasma's final life stage, evolution of the temperature and electronic density of the plasma is studied. The LTE condition was also verified by McWhirter's criterion.