I still confuse about the color of plasma. If we using different type of gas, the color of plasma that appear is different too.
what causes the plasma have different color? Can you help me get the explanation?
thanks for your reply
The color of a plasma is determined by the photons, which are emitted when the electrons recombine with the ions (or when excited electrons relax into a lower energy state). The photon energy and, hence, it's wavelength (which determines the color) is dependent on the energy difference between the two energy levels.
Of course the plasma colour should change with the gas type, and also if you have some impurities (for instant air) in your source, and that is because every gas has its own ionization energy, so when you ignite your plasma you give energy to the electrons to move to the excited states and when it release to the ground states it emits photons (light) and the wavelength of this photons indicates the colour of the emitted light (key words: ionization energy, energy gaps, excited and ground states, wavelength and colour chart) .
and how good are we in the simulation of this? only tiny little steps for now, do we? Bochum is doing a good job in that direction.
Plasma color (wavelength emissions) depend mostly on the plasma fuel and temperature.
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