Developments in optical system evaluation, spatial modeling, chemometrics and applications with atomic spectroscopy

High temperature plasma emission sources have spatial characteristics. The Abel inversion calculates radial responses from lateral measurements of cylindrically symmetric emission sources.; This dissertation presents three aspects of making spatial measurements: (1) Evaluation of an optical setup; (2) New numerically exact routine for improved spatial modeling; and (3) Radial and lateral measurements.; Optical ray tracing software was been used for critical evaluation of the design of a unique imaging spectrometer. Position, area, and angles of view are calculated as a function of position of a translating lens and the optical properties of the quartz tube. The translating lens imaging spectrometer is compared to the more common alternative of moving the source or detector and found to perform comparatively well.; A new Abel inversion technique, based on numerical improvements in a matrix-based algorithm, is described. The new approach (Mabel) combines exact computation of area terms for the Abel inversion with matrix calculation capabilities present in the MATLAB{dollar}sp{lcub}rm TM{rcub}{dollar} computational environment to generate radial profiles from lateral scans of the plasma with the best accuracy possible. Results of four 1000 ring Mabel inversions are presented. Comparisons between Mabel and two other numerical methods are made for test cases commonly cited in literature and for test cases having radial and lateral profiles with analytic solutions. The effects of noise propagation and of incomplete viewing of the plasma are also presented.; Temperature is one of the most fundamental characteristic of high temperature plasmas. Lateral and radial temperatures measured from different views result in different values for a given plasma emission source. Four radial temperature profiles were used to generate radial intensities of five different wavelengths on the basis of a Boltzmann distribution of energies at each temperature. Forward Mabel transforms were performed on the radial intensities to produce lateral intensity profiles. The temperature at each lateral position can be derived from the slope of a straight line fitted to the natural logarithm of intensity as a function of energy. The modeled radial temperature profiles yield lateral profiles that are dependent on the shape, magnitude of the radial profile, and wavelengths used to measure the temperature.