Abstract

The lasing on the transitions between the 5d and 6p levels of Xe atoms corresponding to 1.73-3.5-µm wavelengths was obtained in a wide region of pumping power from 10-100 W/cm³ in experiments with nuclear pumping¹ to 10⁵ W/ cm³ in experiments with pumping by electron beams.² There are two main hypotheses about a process of building up the 5d levels of Xe atoms in Ar/Xe mixture. The first one supposes that pumping of 5d levels is a result of dissociative recombination of ArXe⁺ ion with electron,³ and the second prefers the recombination of ${\text{Xe}}_2^{+}\left({}^2{\Sigma }^{+}\right)$ ion with electron.¹ However, both of these hypotheses fail to describe all the experimental results in the case of low¹ and high² pumping powers. The attempt to take into account the new channel of Xe(5d) building up through dissociative recombination of ${\text{Xe}}_2^{+}$ ion in excited state B²II⁴ did not solve this problem either. These results lead to the conclusion that the description of variation of plasma composition with changing pumping power is not adequate in all cited kinetic models.

© 1994 IEEE