Abstract

A travelling wave excitation process^[1] has been used to produce a high gain, single-pass laser in Aril at476 nm. Soft x-rays from a laser-produced plasma rapidly photoionize an Ar gas to produce a population inversion between the 3p⁴4p and 3p⁴4s levels of Aril. This pumping can be described as two-electron “shake-up” photoionization. One electron is is photoionized and another is excited in the same process. This is shown in the energy level diagram of Fig. 1. Previous work^[2] on this type of inversion in Ar produced gains of 0.8-0.9 cm^-1. Using this travelling wave geometry we have acheived gains of up to 2.1 cm^-4.

© 1992 IQEC