A. D. Margolin

Nonelectrical method of pumping solid-state lasers

An alternative, nonelectrical method for obtaining a dense radiating plasma and the possibilities of using this method to pump solid-state lasers are investigated. The plasma was obtained experimentally by heating the working gas in a two-stage ballistic plasmatron. A new device — a vortex chamber — is proposed for transferring energy into the plasmatron-laser system.

Energy characteristics of a carbon monoxide gasdynamic laser

The characteristics of gasdynamic lasers based on mixtures of carbon monoxide with nitrogen and inert gases were investigated and the populations of vibrational levels of CO molecules, the gain of the mixture, and the generation power were determined in [1–8]. But the parameters of a gasdynamic laser (GDL) in the optimum emission mode have not been determined up to now. The difficulties in calculating the optimum energy characteristics are connected with the complexity of the calculating model and the large number of parameters of the system. The energy characteristics of a CO gasdynamic laser are calculated and optimized in the present report on the basis of a simple model.

Theory of two-component gasdynamic laser

In the present paper a numerical calculation is made of the vibrational relaxation of a binary mixture of molecular nitrogen and carbon dioxide gas. The calculation is performed for the entire range of variation of the concentrations of the components and over a wide range of mixture temperatures and pressures for various geometries of the supersonic part of the nozzle (throat dimensions, degree of expansion). It is shown that population inversion of the CO2 molecules exists within a certain range of variation of the parameters of the mixture and the nozzle. The population inversion of the vibrational levels and the gain of the gaseous mixture are calculated as functions of these parameters and of distance measured from the critical cross section of the nozzle. The energy characteristics of the two-component gasdynamic laser are optimized.