Abstract

The mercury vapor laser is an efficient yet simple to implement gas laser: it can be pumped by a run-of-the-mill low-pressure mercury discharge lamp, and reaches output powers of several mW. However, there is as yet no modelling that is detailed enough to allow quantitative optimization of this laser. In this contribution, we remedy this situation, giving special care to the nonlinear radiation trapping, which heavily influences the efficiency.

© 1996 IEEE