Modelling of Collisional Ionization in Laser Excited Sodium Atoms

Abstract

The time evolution of the energy distribution of the free electrons created by collisional ionization of sodium vapor resonantly excited with cw laser due to different physical mechanisms have been studied theoretically. The calculations clarified that the distribution of the electron energy tends to become non-Maxwellian for different periods of time. Also the computational model indicated that the major processes in the different stages of the plasma creation are purely collisional for both excitation and ionization. Moreover our calculations of energy spectra of electrons have characteristic peaks corresponding to associative ionization and superelastic collisions. A reasonable agreement with experiments is obtained.