Three kinds of wall-stabilized argon arcs satisfactory for different requirement have been developed. The measurement in UV and VUV range indicated that the stability

both short term and long term

and the reproducibility of the spectral radiance of 2.5kW arc and 10kW arc were better than ?0.3%

and the similarity among arcs with the same structure was better than ?1%. The stability and the reproducibility of 1kW arc were better than ?0.8%. This paper discusses the property of the spectral radiance distribution of argon arcs in 165-350nm range

the temperature and electron density diagnostics of argon arc plasma

and the black body limited lines technique for absolute calibration.