Spatial–temporal kinetics of the ground state population of the copper atom in a copper vapor laser

An analysis was made of a method of measuring the ground-state population of copper atoms in the medium of a self-heated copper vapor laser. The active medium was probed using radiation from a pulsed dye laser (temporal resolution 5 ns, spatial resolution 2 mm). An investigation was made of the ground-state kinetics during an excitation pulse and in an interpulse interval over the whole lasing temperature range of 1350–1650 °C in a commercial UL-101 laser. A deficit of copper atoms additional to the thermal one was revealed and studied using the radial distributions of the ground state population. The physical processes governing the radial distributions of copper atoms in the ground state are discussed.