Kinetics of the active medium of a He — Sr+ recombination laser: 1. Spatiotemporal characteristics

A self-consistent mathematical model of a He — Sr⁺ recombination laser is developed and used to study the establishment of a repetitively pulsed regime in the active medium. The spatiotemporal characteristics are analysed in the stationary regime under different excitation conditions, the contraction of a repetitively pulsed discharge in helium is investigated and the discharge decontraction upon addition of strontium vapour, which is fundamentally important for metal vapour lasers is studied. Numerical simulations are shown to be a convenient tool for investigating the kinetics of the active medium of a He — Sr⁺ laser, which enables predicting the optimal excitation conditions and calculating the limiting lasing characteristics.