Evaporation of Carbon Atoms and Molecules in Helium by Low-Current Arc Discharge with Graphite Electrodes

Abstract: In terms of the unified model of low-current arc discharge, which describes the processes occurring in the gas-discharge gap and in the electrodes, numerical calculations have been carried out to study the evaporation of carbon atoms and molecules from graphite electrodes into a nonequilibrium helium arc plasma. For different values of discharge current density, the distributions of atomic and molecular carbon and their ions are presented.