Direct nuclear pumping of gas l a s e r s has been achieved using t h e 3He(n,p)3H n u c l e a r r e a c t i o n .

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Direct nuclear pumping of 3He-Xe and 3He-Kr has been achieved using the volumetric 3He(n,p)3H nuclear reaction. Lasing occurred at 2.027 μ and near 2.5 μ in Xe I and Kr I, respectively. The Xe transition has the lowest lasing flux threshold to date, 4×1015 n/cm2 sec. Scaling with both thermal flux and total pressure has been investigated.

A video camera system capable of imaging vacuum ultraviolet emission in the 120–160 nm wavelength range, from the entire divertor region in the DIII–D tokamak, was designed. The new system has a tangential view of the divertor similar to an existing tangential camera system [M. E. Fenstermacher et al., Rev. Sci. Instrum. 68, 974 (1997)] which has produced two-dimensional maps of visible line emission (400–800 nm) from deuterium and carbon in the divertor region. However, the overwhelming fraction of the power radiated by these elements is emitted by resonance transitions in the ultraviolet, namely the C IV line at 155.0 nm and Ly-α line at 121.6 nm. To image the ultraviolet light with an angular view including the inner wall and outer bias ring in DIII–D, a six-element optical system (f/8.9) was designed using a combination of reflective and refractive optics. This system will provide a spatial resolution of 1.2 cm in the object plane. An intermediate UV image formed in a secondary vacuum is converted to the visible by means of a phosphor plate and detected with a conventional charge injection device (CID) camera (30 ms framing rate). A single MgF2 lens serves as the vacuum interface between the primary and secondary vacuums; a second lens must be inserted in the secondary vacuum to correct the focus at 155 nm. Using the same tomographic inversion method employed for the visible TV, we will reconstruct the poloidal distribution of the UV divertor light. The grain size of the phosphor plate and the optical system aberrations limit the best focus spot size to 60 μm at the CID plane. The optical system is designed to withstand 350 °C vessel bakeout, 2 T magnetic fields, and disruption-induced accelerations of the vessel.