The are discharge studied in this work was sustained by titanium vapor evaporated by an electron beam in nitrogen atmosphere. Optical emission spectroscopy and Langmuir probe diagnostics were carried out to study the excitation of titanium and nitrogen. It was found that with increasing are current, Ti and nitrogen gas exhibited an opposite tendency of excitation. When are current increased from 20 to 60 A, Ti was highly excited to Ti+, while the excitation of nitrogen was lowered; this is completely different from that for a conventional cathodic are, where both Ti and N-2 are highly ionized. By Langmuir probe diagnostics, the electron energy distribution followed a two-Maxwellian distribution at an are current of 60 A; the electron temperatures were 0.98 and 10.1 eV, and the corresponding electron densities were 2.7X10(11) and 3.9X10(9) cm(3), respectively. This result provided a theoretical explanation for the difference of excitation between titanium and nitrogen in this are.