Stimulated emission mechanism of a copper vapor laser

An investigation is made of the elementary processes and characteristics of a pulsed nanosecond discharge plasma in a copper vapor–buffer gas mixture and of their correlation with the laser energy parameters. It is shown that the saturation of the stimulated emission power with rising pressure must be associated with a drop in the effective electron temperature. The complex dependence of the stimulated emission energy on the buffer gas (neon) pressure is identified and explained. It is established that at high operating pressures the pulse repetition frequency is governed by the electron cooling rate and by the plasma recombination in the afterpulse interval. At low pressures and for small laser tube apertures the pulse frequency is governed by the quenching of the metastable states by the walls. The excitation conditions are optimized and an efficiency of 2.1 % is achieved.