A collisional radiative model for mercury in high-current discharges

A collisional radiative model is presented for mercury discharges with electron temperatures between 0.75-2 eV and electron densities between 1018-1020 m-3. Such plasma parameters are encountered in a number of modern light sources, such as mercury-operated induction lamps and the compact fluorescent lamp. The analytical top model has been used, which allows the majority of the non-equilibrium levels to be taken into account implicitly. As a result, indirect ionization processes involving highly excited atomic mercury states are taken into account in spite of the relatively low number of levels (19) which has been considered. The influence of higher atomic mercury levels on the ionization rate coefficient has been carefully analysed, and has been found to contribute significantly. Furthermore, a consistent means of quantifying the production of radiation by the plasma will be presented by introducing the specific effective emissivities. These enable one to express the total radiated power in terms of the densities of the transport-dominated states and the electron density and temperature. These coefficients, as well as the net coefficients of ionization and recombination, will be presented and discussed, enabling their usage in plasma transport models.