Saturation studies of the E-beam sustained discharge atomic xenon laser

Botma, H.; Peters, Peter J.; Witteman, W.J.

doi:10.1109/3.247710

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The inconsistency of the data shown in Fig. 3 with our results from pulsed experiments at multi-atmospheric pressures 11 may be attributed to different discharge conditions and/or formation kinetics. Perhaps due to this different excitation mechanism laser action on the well-known atomic Xe laser line at 1.73 m is absent in all our experiments.…”

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confidence: 53%

Continuous wave near-infrared atomic Xe laser excited by a radio frequency discharge in a slab geometry

Tskhaǐ

Udalov

Peters

et al. 1995

Applied Physics Letters

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Near-infrared atomic Xe laser lines have been generated from an Ar:He:Xe laser gas mixture excited by a radio frequency ͑rf͒ discharge in a slab geometry. A maximum continuous wave ͑cw͒ output power of 1.5 W ͑270 W/l͒ was obtained at an rf frequency of 125 MHz from a gas mixture containing Ar:He:Xe ͑50:49:1͒ at a total gas pressure of 90 Torr. © 1995 American Institute of Physics.There is a steady growing interest in sources of coherent radiation which operate in the wavelength region of 2-3 m.1 Possible applications of such systems include the design of eye-safe radars, 2-4 the monitoring of the atmosphere and in medicine. [5][6][7] Until now the research in this wavelength region was concentrated mainly on the improvement of solid state lasers made from YAG and YLF crystals doped with rare earth metals like holmium, erbium, and thulium which are capable of operating in a pulsed mode as well as cw. So far, there are no other lasers capable of delivering a cw output on a reasonably high power level in this spectral domain.Recently, we published the first results concerning a new cw rf excited Ar:He:Xe laser with an output power of about 300 mW. 8 This laser operates in a multiline mode with 90% of the output concentrated in the two strongest atomic Xe lines: the 5d͓3/2͔ 1 Ϫ6p͓1/2͔ 0 transition with a wavelength of 2.65 m and the 5d͓3/2͔1 -6p͓3/2͔ 1 transition at 2.03 m. In principle, this laser competes with the abovementioned rare earth doped solid state lasers which also emit their radiation in the same spectral range and are reported to operate at the same power level.In this letter, we report on a different approach to enhance the output power of such an rf excited atomic Xe laser. By using a laser resonator in a planar configuration which is homogeneously filled with a gas discharge plasma we were able to increase substantially the volume of the active medium. It resulted in an increase of the output power to a maximum value of 1.5 W and also improved the efficiency with a factor 4 compared to our earlier results. 8 We have tested several electrode and resonator configurations. The experimental setup is discussed in more detail elswhere.8.9 Here we will give only a brief description of the equipment used in our experiments. A signal from a low power master oscillator was amplified in a wide band rf amplifier ͑Kalmus, model 124C͒ which is capable to deliver a rf output power of 500 W in the frequency range of 10 kHz-220 MHz. The forward and reflected rf power was measured with a digital power meter ͑Thruline 4421 from Bird Electronics Corp.͒. The excitation frequency used in our experiments was varied between 100 and 125 MHz. The frequency choice in each particular case was determined by the resonance conditions for the RLC circuit formed by the discharge impedance, the capacitance of the laser structure, and the inductance of the shunting coils connected parallel to the laser electrodes. The construction of the laser head used in the experiments was basically the same as used in Ref. 8. The ground electrode...

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confidence: 53%

Continuous wave near-infrared atomic Xe laser excited by a radio frequency discharge in a slab geometry

Tskhaǐ

Udalov

Peters

et al. 1995

Applied Physics Letters

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“…It is seen that higher efficiencies are indeed obtained with higher c-beam current densities. If the c-beam current or sustainer current is too high or the gas density too low then the electron quenching will terminate for a while the laser process after which it starts at low power (8). We conclude from fig.…”

Section: E-beam Sustained Operationmentioning

confidence: 89%

<title>High-power atomic xenon laser</title>

et al. 1995

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The high pressure atomic xenon laser is becoming the most promising light source in the wavelength region of a few microns. The merits are high efficiency (so far up to 8 percent), high output energies (15 J/liter at 9 bar), high continuous output power (more than 200 W/litre), no gas dissociation and thermal heating of the lower laser level. Compared with the well-known low pressure xenon laser the power performance is now roughly a factor thousand higher. The operation of the system, based on three-body-collisions, uses the metastable state of the xenon atom as the ground state so that in the recirculation of energy a high quantum efficiency is obtained. Furthermore the homogeneous line broadening caused by the high collision frequency has also a strong beneficial effect on the efficiency. However, the required intense homogeneous excitation of the gas medium at high density is from a technical point of view a great challenge. From our experimental and theoretical work we found that at optimum performance the input power must be 1 to 2.5 [KW cm3 atm 2j. We describe our results obtained with c-beam sustained and x-ray preionized systems delivering pulsed energies in the range of joules per litre. Furthermore we describe our recent results on continuous RF excited wave guide systems of about 37 cm length with output powers in the range of watts.Keywords: high atomic lasers, cw and pulsed 2-3 j.m lasers.

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“…The experimental parametric studies of the Ar-Xe recombination laser have been carried out with the instrumentation described in Refs (7,10). It is an e-beam sustained system.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

IR recombination lasers

Witteman

Peters

Botma

et al. 1995

Infrared Physics & Technology

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Abstract--The present study contributes to a better understanding of the atomic Xe laser as a powerful IR source. Several important phenomena like the dependence of both the observed optimized input power and maximum output power on the square of the gas density and also the constant fractional ionization are reported and verified theoretically. The insight in the kinetics of this system has also lead to the realization of small-size continuous systems with output powers in the range of watts. The results of the present study can be used to predict the performance of the atomic Xe laser under different operating conditions.

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Saturation studies of the E-beam sustained discharge atomic xenon laser

Cited by 10 publications

References 16 publications

Continuous wave near-infrared atomic Xe laser excited by a radio frequency discharge in a slab geometry

Continuous wave near-infrared atomic Xe laser excited by a radio frequency discharge in a slab geometry

<title>High-power atomic xenon laser</title>

IR recombination lasers

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