Research into the kinetics of electronically excited species of importance to a variety of plasma processes is proposed in a continuation of a previous Thermal Systems Program award. The areas to be investigated are the chemical properties of excimers produced by photoassociation, and the application of excited state interatomic potentials to quenching. Specifically, photoassociation will be utilized to investigate the structure of shallow or predissociating excimer states or the chemical reactivity of more strongly bound electronically excited molecules having dissociative ground states. Such an approach allows one to access species from the vacuum uv that are otherwise difficult to study experimentally. Laser inter- Rydberg spectroscopy of heteronuclear diatomic rare gas systems will be conducted in order to investigate the impact of atomic interaction potentials on the collisional deactivation of atomic excited states. It is expected that the experimental program will provide fundamental chemical and optical data concerning difficult to observe atomic and excimer species, and that the results will improve our understanding and performance of devices and processes of engineering significance.
