Electric Discharge and Afterglow Kinetics for Laser Mixtures with Carbon Monoxide, Oxygen and Iodine

摘要

This report results from a contract tasking Lebedev Physics Institute as follows: Previous research carried out under the ISTC partner contracts has demonstrated that an electric discharge could be a powerful means for producing highly excited CO molecules needed for overtone CO lasers, for producing electrically excited oxygen and for obtaining iodine atoms via iodine dissociation, which can be extremely useful for the development of the electrically assisted oxygen-iodine laser. Therefore, the Project will be aimed at improving understanding of three main problems tightly related to each other: the experimental and theoretical study of the kinetics of highly excited CO molecules in an E-beam and RF discharge, which is extremely important for development of efficient overtone CO laser (including the supersonic CO laser); the experimental and theoretical study of singlet-delta oxygen (SDO) kinetics in E-beam and DC discharges, which is important for efficient SDO production and development of an electrically-assisted oxygen-iodine laser; the experimental and theoretical study of the kinetics of atomic iodine production in vortex flow DC discharges, which is important for the improvement of chemical oxygen-iodine lasers. The research team proposed for this project consists of experts from the Gas Laser Lab and Chemical Lasers Lab of the Quantum Radiophysics Institute of the Lebedev Physics Institute in Moscow and the Samara Branch of the Lebedev Institute. The research team has extensive experience in the field of experimental and theoretical fundamental research on kinetic processes taking place in the active media of different electric discharge and chemical lasers.