Abstract

The collisional lasers are attractive owing to the possibility of obtaining high energy and lasing power on excitation of large volumes of compressed gases. The ionizing pumping that is well-known since the middle 60-ies, the electron-beam pumping mainly, may be intended just for these conditions. At the same time, the efficient (>1% efficiency) short-wavelength (λ ≤ 1 μm; the excimer systems are not considered) collisional lasers with ionizing excitation appeared only after 1985 substantially by the efforts of our group, and the efficiency of near IR lasers due to d-p transitions of heavy inert gases did not exceed 1-3% [1].

© 1998 IEEE