Energy balance and gain dynamics in the active medium of an electron-beam-controlled CO laser

Abstract

A theoretical analysis is made of the kinetics of elementary processes in the active medium of an electron-beam-controlled CO laser. It is shown that a systematic allowance must be made for the mutual influence of time variations of the discharge electron energy distribution and the CO vibrational level populations. This is used as the basis to develop a self-consistent mathematical model that gives a quantitative agreement with the experimental data for the active medium of electron-beam-controlled CO lasers in terms of the vibrational excitation efliciency and temperature conditions, and also in terms of the spectrum, absolute value, and time dependence of the gain under pulsed excitation conditions.