Abstract
A method of estimating the plasma temperature in a thermal equilibrium plasma from the measured discharge voltage and current waveform is introduced. The model consists of the discharge current and the energy balance equations. The target plasma is the lamp plasma in a high-pressure Hg or Na lamp. The appropriate plasma temperature can be estimated if the resonance radiation potential is used as the average excitation potential. The discharge voltage waveforms calculated from the obtained coefficients show good agreement with the measured ones. However, it is not clear why the resonance radiation potential should be used as the average excitation potential even for a Hg-lamp.
