AMPLIFICATION IN RECOMBINING PLASMAS (PLASMA LASERS)
Gudzenko, L.I., Shelepin,L.A., Yakovlenko,S.I.: 1975, Sov.Phys.Usp.,
17, 848.
A review is given of the investigations of lasers in which the amplifying
medium is a rapidly recombining (supercooled in respect to free electrons)
dense plasma. Efficient amplification of visible and ultraviolet radiation
is possible in a plasma with free-electron density Ne = 10^13 - 10^18 cm^-3
and an electron temperature Te = 0.05 - 2 eV. At short wavelengths and high
energies, the plasma lasers have important advantages over the conventional
gas lasers in which the active medium is a gas-discharge overheated plasma
which is being ionized. The purpose of the review is to identify the
developing trends in the investigations of plasma lasers. An analysis is
made of the recombination mechanisms of population inversion of atomic,
ionic and molecular levels, of the methods of producing a supercooled
plasma, and of the characteristics of different variants of plasma lasers.
The general theoretical ideas are illustrated by numerical calculations
and experimental results.
There is an HTML version of this paper.
An numbered index of references
or a sequential list of abstracts
is also available.