Summary form only given, as follows. We report on experimentalstudies of vacuum ultraviolet emission and excited state populations inhigh-pressure microdischarges intended to simulate the operation of asingle pixel in a flat plasma display panel. In PDP cells, ultravioletlight produced by the He/Xe plasma controls the color purity andbrightness of red, green or blue pixels. In the results reported, ourmicrodischarge consists of two bare coaxial brass electrodes separatedby a few hundreds of micrometers, across which a DC voltage is applied.The ultraviolet emission in the 140-180 nm range is measured over a widerange of operating conditions. These measurements are complimented bydirect metastable state population measurements in excited atomic xenonby tunable laser absorption. Our results provide supporting evidence forthe formation of helium-xenon hetero-dimer ions, which may control theelectrical properties of the microdischarge. The laser absorptionmeasurements also show quite conclusively, saturation in the productionof excited state xenon as pressure is increased, owing to the productionof dimer species
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