Modeling of a pulsed HF chemical laser pumped by a VUV radiation source

Abstract

We introduce a numerical investigation of a HF photochemical laser pumped by planar multi-channel sliding discharge to study the possibility of advanced laser characteristic achievement using such pumping source. The model considers transport of VUV pump radiation through the nonlinear absorptive active medium containing NF3/H2/N2Ar gas mixture coupled with chemical and lasing kinetics describing the temporal and spatial evolution of particle species and intracavity lasing photons. The relative importance of various kinetic processes is evaluated and the 3.2 J/liter laser specific energy is calculated.