Radiative and radiationless transitions: some answers to problems with recombination lasers

摘要

One of the major theoretical problems in interpreting expansion cooled recombination lasers is the anomalously rapid decay rate of the principal radiative transition. Satisfactory agreement between simulations and experiment has only been obtained by an ad hoc reduction in the self absorption of the line. We examine the radiative transfer of this line, and show that the net radiative bracket may, in typical situations, by sufficiently large than the conventionally used escape factor to account for this discrepancy. We also examine the role of doubly excited states in the recombination cascade, and show that under appropriate conditions collisional recombination and auto-ionization can lead to significant rate.