Radiation transport in metal halide lamps

Radiation transport in Metal Halide lamps is studied using ray tracing and the plasma simulation toolkit Plasimo. Methods to simplify the calculation of the energy loss term in a multi-fluid model of a metal halide lamps are analysed. Optically thin lines are lumped together in a smaller number of effective transitions. The error introduced into the calculated radiation loss term is examined for two cases using ray tracing. In the first, rather artificial case, the energy radiated by a sphere containing both mercury and dysprosium vapor evenly mixed and with a constant temperature is calculated. In the second case a cylinder containing mercury and non-evenly distributed dysprosium with a parabolic temperature profile is examined. The use of effective transitions is shown to give a good approximation of the energy loss term.