Plasma use as a lasing medium has many potential advantages over conventional techniques including increased power levels and greater wavelength ranges. The basic concept, first proposed by Gudzenko, is to heat and then rapidly cool a plasma forcing inversion through bottleneck creation between the recombination reaction populating a given energy level and the subsequent decay processes. Much effort has been devoted to plasmas heated by lasers and pinch devices. We are concerned here with electron beam heated plasmas focusing on the CIV 5g-4f transition occurring at 2530 Angstroms. These studies were initiated to provide theoretical support for experiments being performed at the University of Michigan using the Michigan Electron Long-Pulse Beam Accelerator (MELBA) The theoretical model is discussed first to provide necessary background. Studies are then presented which identify two types of plasma response dependent upon the heating rate. Finally implications of the general studies upon MELBA experiments are discussed.

Date Published: 1 June 1989
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 1041, Metal Vapor Laser Technology and Applications, (1 June 1989); doi: 10.1117/12.951254

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1041:
Metal Vapor Laser Technology and Applications
Jin J. Kim; Randy Kimball; P. Jeffrey Wisoff, Editor(s)