Abstract

The atomic xenon laser operates on six infrared transitions (1.73–3.51 μm) between the 5d and 6p manifolds. High intrinsic laser efficiencies (2-5%) have been obtained using a variety of pumping schemes (discharge, electron beam and fission fragment excitation) and over a large range of pressures (0.5-10 atm). The majority of these studies have emphasized laser performance with measurements of gain and saturation intensity being indirectly obtained from Rigrod types of analyses. From these experiments, it was found that the saturation intensity scaled as P^0.6 (P is the power deposition). It was suggested that electron collision quenching was responsible for the increase in I_sat since [e] scales roughly as p^0.5 in recombination dominated plasmas. We also implied quite large broadening coefficients (many 10’s MHz-Torr⁻¹).

© 1991 Optical Society of America