ABSTRACT
In high-pressure plasma-based light sources a substantial part of the radiation originates from regions in which self-absorbed lines get their reversal shape. The intensity at the maximum of self-reversed emission lines has been extensively used for determining the electron, excitation, and distribution temperatures [I]. The basic assumption of the underlying model is that the source function can be described with one parameter solely. In this paper the reliability of this assumption for calculating the intensity at the line maximum will be rigorously tested by numerical experiments.
