Investigation of atmospheric and low-pressure nitrogen laser amplifiers

Methods for synchronization of nitrogen lasers and techniques for expanding laser beams were developed. An angular divergence of 0.1 mrad, a peak power of 1.5 MW, and a pulse duration of 1.2 nsec were achieved. An atmospheric nitrogen laser was used as a master oscillator and a lowpressure nitrogen laser was employed as an amplifier. They were synchronized to within 1 nsec. Several variants of synchronization by delay lines and methods for expanding a laser beam were investigated.