Role of negative ions in the plasma of pulsed metal and metal-compound vapour lasers

An analysis is made of the published data on the discharge and lasing characteristics, and on the level population kinetics of pulsed lasers based on vapours of metals and their halides mixed with hydrogen and HBr additives. The influence of dissociative attachment, particularly to the HBr molecule, on the population inversion kinetics of these lasers is considered. Such attachment makes it possible to explain all the observed features of the investigated lasers, including an increase in the efficiency and power of a CuBr laser with added hydrogen and of a ‘HyBrID’ laser. The addition of molecules with a large dissociative-attachment cross section and with a suitable position of the maximum of this cross section provides new opportunities for improving the characteristics of pulsed lasers based on r – m transitions between resonance (r) and metastable (m) levels.