Argon up to pressures of 3 MPa was excited by intense electron beam pumping. At the maximum an energy of 20 meV per atom was deposited into the gas. The population of the transient argon species , , and was investigated for different pumping conditions by absorption and emission spectrometry. A kinetic model is proposed that reproduces the experimental data. The spin-flip reaction with a rate constant of is responsible for the rapid destruction of the metastable excimer and for the population of the lasing state. The rapid dissociation of vibrationally excited by plasma electrons leads to a saturation in the population of with rising pumping density.

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10z' (19_+ 5) ns. From the time integrated fluorescence data the collisional quenching rates between the above states were determined.

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