TY - CONF A1 - Gornushkin, Igor T1 - Importance of Spectral Resolution for Accurate Plasma Diagnostics with Implications for Calibration-Free LIBS N2 - In the LIBS literature, almost every second article reports the determination of the plasma temperature using the Boltzmann plot method or the determination of the electron density using the Stark line broadening relation. The first requires the measurement of the integrated intensities of the spectral lines, and the second requires the measurement of the linewidth, under the same assumption of optical thinness. It is taken for granted that this can be easily done either by working with the raw spectra or by fitting an appropriate function to the observed spectral lines. As a rule, reported data are not verified either by an alternative method (e.g., Thomson scattering) or by computer simulations using synthetic spectra. However, the question of how to extract the necessary information from the raw spectral data is not as simple as it might seem. The quality of such an extraction will depend critically on the type of spectral instrument used, its resolution, and the noise superimposed on the data. The problem is that we do not see the spectrum emitted by the plasma, but the spectrum distorted by the measurement; an exaggerated example of such a distortion is shown in Fig. 1. The elimination of this distortion belongs to the class of inverse problems, the so-called ill-posed problems, whose successful solution crucially depends on the quality of the information available. When it comes to spectroscopy, quality of information primarily means high spectral resolution and low noise. Not all spectrometers used in LIBS can provide the quality needed to solve the inverse problem; this casts doubt on many published plasma measurements. The current presentation will be devoted to general shortcomings in the processing of spectral data and inaccuracies in the determination of plasma parameters resulting from these shortcomings. The analysis is based on the use of synthetic spectra produced by plasma with known characteristics, i.e., temperature, species densities, and electron density. The estimation of errors caused by inadequate processing of spectral data is made by comparing the initial and reconstructed plasma parameters. Recipes will be given for which the analytic function best approximates the observed spectral lines, and how data processing errors affect accuracy of calibration-free LIBS will be discussed. These issues were only partially covered in previously published works, for example [1, 2, 3]. T2 - EMS LIBS 2023 CY - Porto, Portugal DA - 04.09.2023 KW - Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy KW - Calibration-free analysis KW - Data processing PY - 2023 AN - OPUS4-58590 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -