Analysis of simultaneous generation of argon and krypton laser lines in ion lasers filled with argon-krypton mixture

Abstract

Argon ion lasers can generate several strong laser lines in short wavelength region of visible spectrum (green and blue light). Krypton ones offer the generation of laser lines in long wavelength region (red and yellow light). Both gases have complementary generation ranges thus ion lasers filled with mixture of argon and krypton are attractive laser sources for many applications. In most of these applications the only one laser line selected with dispersion element within the resonator are used at one time. After removing the dispersion element the simultaneous generation of many wavelengths is possible. Unfortunately in this working mode of ion lasers the negative effect of competition between laser lines appears. The effect has the most significant influence on the generation of yellow Kr II 568 nm line which is very needed for some applications due to small number of other available strong laser sources for this light range. Generation conditions of this line is strongly hampered when ion laser simultaneously generates other laser lines thus in this laser working mode this laser line completely disappears. We have observed the exact reason of this effect and we have described the way to improve laser generation conditions of Kr II 568 nm line which makes possible to obtain the laser generation of this line simultaneously with other laser lines.