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Both hollow-cathode and Penning-type discharges were adopted to excite helium atoms to a metastable state.Experimental data indicate that Penning discharge is more suitable for generating high fractions of metastables in a low-density helium beam for laser-induced fluorescence technique in measuring electric fields at the edge of a plasma.The metastable density increases with increasing helium gas pressure in the range of 1.33× 10-2-66.7Pa. The highest metastable density of 3.8 × 1016m-3 is observed at a static gas pressure of 66.7Pa. An approximately linear relationship between the density of metastable helium atoms and the plasma discharge current is observed. Magnetic field plays a very important role in producing a high density of metastable atoms in Penning discharge.