Low-Pressure Iodine Laser: Effect Of Collisional Relaxation Of Velocity Distribution On Efficiency And Longitudinal Mode Spectrum

Alan H. Paxton; William P. Latham Jr.

doi:10.1117/12.951321

31 May 1989 Low-Pressure Iodine Laser: Effect Of Collisional Relaxation Of Velocity Distribution On Efficiency And Longitudinal Mode Spectrum

Alan H. Paxton, William P. Latham Jr.

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 1045, Modeling and Simulation of Laser Systems; (1989) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.951321
Event: OE/LASE '89, 1989, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Abstract

Doppler-broadened gas lasers can be influenced by the process of the relaxation of the velocity distribution of the lasing species due to elastic collisions. The homogeneous line width is increased to account for the broadening of the atomic resonance due to the collisional phase shift of the radiation, in the simplest treatment of this process. When a treatment of velocity redistribution due to elastic collisions must also be included, the collision-time-approximation to the transport integral equation is commonly used. The iodine laser that will be discussed here uses helium as a buffer gas, so the iodine atoms collide with helium atoms far more frequently than with any other molecule. The ratio of masses for these two atoms is so large that the collision-time-approximation may not be valid. Here we describe a rate-equation model for the oxygen-iodine laser that incorporates the Fokker-Planck equation for the redistribution of the iodine velocities. This numerical model is used to calculate the spectrum of longitudinal modes and the variation of laser efficiency with length.

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Alan H. Paxton and William P. Latham Jr. "Low-Pressure Iodine Laser: Effect Of Collisional Relaxation Of Velocity Distribution On Efficiency And Longitudinal Mode Spectrum", Proc. SPIE 1045, Modeling and Simulation of Laser Systems, (31 May 1989); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.951321

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