ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION High pressure sulfur discharges have the appealing property of producing a pleasant visible spectrum efficiently. Moreover, the spectrum originates entirely from the sulfur dimer. However, very little is known about this new visible light source and we have taken a combined modelling/experimental approach to further our understanding of the system. The integrated environment for the construction and execution of plasma models, PLASIMO [I], has been used to model a ID LTE energy balance of the lamp including Ohmic heating, radiation emission and absorption and heat conduction with the aim of reproducing the observed spectrum. Several atomic lines found in the spectrum were used for validation of the model. Direct temperature measurements and the comparison of the measured and simulated response of the entire molecular spectrum to power interruption have been used as confirmation of the model.
