Advanced Optical Diagnostics for Characterization of Arc Plasmas

This article presents the selected approaches of optical diagnostics applied to thermal arcs. Advanced methods for the determination of temperatures and species density distributions are described and examples of recent developments are presented, such as the consideration of optical depth in optical emission measurements, the use of broadband light sources for measurements of spatially resolved densities, or the combination of spectral analysis with high-speed video observation for the purpose of surface temperature determination. Finally, the potential of the presented diagnostics to solve future challenges of thermal arc research is demonstrated and discussed.