The vacuum ultraviolet spectrum of krypton and xenon excimers excited in a cooled dc discharge

u

, 0_u ⁺ and the weakly bound ground state 0_g ⁺. A semiempirical method was suggested and applied to describe the experimental spectra and to estimate the temperature of the radiating plasma volume. Electron impact, transferring dimers from the ground state to the excited states, is shown to be an efficient excitation mechanism in the 100–850 hPa and the 10–50 mA pressure and discharge current ranges. The spectra obtained as well as the results of calculations corroborate the high rate of this mechanism.