Abstract

Picosecond rare gas halogen lasers are well suited for wavelength up-and-down conversion by nonlinear processes. With the clear advantage of the high peak power, which minimizes the photoionization loss through the reduction of the pulse duration, multiphoton excitation has proved to be an efficient method of generating stimulated emission¹ in the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) region. Furthermore, with use of the optical Stark² shift, the number of available excitation channels can be increased, and, consequently, a large number of intense line sources should be available. In this experiment, strong stimulated emission has been observed in the 110 - 150 nm region on both the C → X and B → X transitions from HD excited by a two-quantum process.

© 1984 Optical Society of America