Aerodynamic techniques are described whereby continuous electric discharges may be produced uniformly over large volumes in nearhyphen;sonic CO2sngbnd;N2sngbnd;He flowstreams. Experiment shows that discharge input power scales with pressure for the range 30ndash;150 Torr thereby maintaining a fixed specific power load of sime; 270 kWsol;lb(mass)sol;sec, while diffuse discharges at 1hyphen;atm pressure have been achieved at much lower specific power levels. Discharges occupying 4.5hyphen; and 43hyphen;liter volumes with the corresponding flowrates 2700 and 28 000 cfm are each uniform over their entire volumes, indicating that volumehyphen;flowrate scaling is not affected by wall diffusion. Using these discharge techniques, a closed cycle 28 000hyphen;cfm 5.6 times; 76 times; 100hyphen;cm3CO2laser amplifier channel has been designed to produce in excess of 20 kW laser power, continuous. In preliminary experiments smallhyphen;signal gains reaching 1.9percnt;sol;cm have been measured transversely across both cold and hot extremities of this device.
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