Implementation of digital holographic interferometry for pulsed plasma studies

The study of low-temperature plasma generated in pulsed mode at atmospheric pressure was carried out. The purpose of the presented research is to develop a method of digital holographic interferometry for registration and evaluation of parameters of low-temperature plasma at atmospheric pressure in pulsed mode. This type of plasma is currently applied in medicine and biology. Thus, there is a need to control the exposure dose and plasma environment formation regimes. As plasma parameters, it can be considered its electron concentration which can be calculated through the estimation of the refractive index of plasma pulse in relation to unperturbed state. The plasma pulses were activated in Helium. The plasma pulse frequency was 5 kHz and its duration was 750 ns. During an investigation a laboratory set-up for recording holographic images of plasma pulses was developed. Holograms are acquired on a digital camera and a pulsed laser INNOLAS SpitLight Hybrid II at a wavelength of 532 nm with pulse duration of 10 ns is used as a source of coherent radiation. In order to record plasma pulses, the laser, plasma generator and digital camera were strictly synchronized to each other. During the experiment, a series of about 500 holograms were acquired, and the reconstruction of the phase of the object field was calculated. Analysis of the sequence of holograms allowed calculations of phase difference (interferograms) related to the refractive index of low-temperature pulsed plasma in Helium. It is known that lowtemperature plasma leads to low phase delay which forms low phase contrast of the evaluated interferograms. For this purpose, we carried out preliminary experiments with plasma-arc that has similar temporary parameters, however, with a higher phase contrast of the interferograms. The paper presents experimental results obtained by studying the phase contrast of the refractive index of pure Helium, plasma-arc and plasma pulses in Helium. Thus, the effectiveness of both the experimental set-up and the method to evaluate the interferograms related to the refractive index of the plasma pulse was verified. The data obtained can then be used to estimate the electron concentration of the plasma. However, it needs to increase the sensitivity of the method in order to enhance phase contrast. Increase of sensitivity can be done by means of extension of the spectral range, for example, toward to infra-red.