A practical method for plasma diagnosis with Balmer series hydrogen lines

Hydrogen Balmer series lines have been widely used to determine characteristic plasma parameters such as electron density. These parameters are related to internal processes occurring in plasma (Stark effect, Doppler effect, …) which give rise to line shapes whose convolution reproduces the total atomic emission line. This procedure provides an estimation of plasma parameters but it requires a large amount of computing time in the data treatment for the convolution operations.