TIME RESOLVED MEASUREMENTS OF ELECTRON NUMBER DENSITY AND ELECTRON TEMPERATURE USING LASER INTERFEROMETRY AT 337-μm WAVELENGTH

Abstract

An experiment is described where a cw HCN laser working primarily at 337‐μm wavelength was used as the source of a Mach‐Zehnder interferometer for the study of plasma decay in the electron number density region 5 · 10¹⁵ > n_e > 5 · 10¹³ cm⁻³. It was found that an estimate of the electron temperature in the range 10³−10⁴°K could also be made from the amplitude of the interferometer fringes.