The effect of self-absorption in hollow cathode lamp on its temperature

Abstract

It has been shown experimentally that even a small error in the calculation of the temperature inside the hollow-cathode lamp (HCL) and the current applied to the lamp, may cause a tremendous error in determination of the absorption ratio in optical resonance absorption (ORA) method. This effect is intensified nonlinearity for large absorption ratios. If a higher current is applied to a copper hollow cathode lamp, the copper density inside the lamp is increasing rapidly. Due to the cylindrical (axisymmetric) form of the lamp, the density of atoms around the main axis of the lamp becomes greater than that near the internal wall. In this case the auto-absorption (or self-absorption) is occurred and as its result, the emission spectrum produced by copper atoms is locally absorbed before going out from the lamp. This absorption is stronger near the main axis compared with the areas near the wall because of the Gaussian profile of the spectral line. Two different Cu atoms ground state lines with the similar lower state (327.4 nm and 324.7 nm) are used in this work as optical resonance absorption and the absorption coefficient is obtained for three different pressures (0.6, 4.5 and 14 µbar). The best values for copper HCL temperature and for maximum HCL current were found respectively 450 K, and 5mA.