The possibilities of pumping UV lasers by synchrotron radiation

Abstract

Creation of lasers in VUV and X-ray region of spectrum is one of the most actual tasks of modern quantum electronics. Use of powerful synchrotron radiation will allow to achieve generation of lasers in the high-energy part of the spectrum. Estimations of possible pumping of wide bandgap crystals (made for NaCl) show that such generation may be obtained with the help of synchrotron radiation of storage rings VEPP in Novosibirsk. The usage of VEPP-3 will allow to achieve a pumping density twice over threshold. Specific power of such a generation in regime of free generation will be about 10 3 W / cm 3. The wide fluorenscence line of proposed active media will make it possible to achieve powerful ultrashort impulses in the VUV-region and tunable generation. Other possible active media for lasers with synchrotron radiation pumping are also discussed. Active media for UV and VUV lasers are intensively explored nowadays. The possibilities of pumping these lasers by powerful synchrotron radiation are discussed. An active medium must be able to absorb pumping radiation, must be transparent for radiation at the wavelength of generation and must be stable under radiation, etc. It will be rather useful to use solid active media, because they have several merits, such as great partial density of energies, convenient use, etc. But, up to now, there are no solid state UV and VUV lasers. So the first task is to look for such active media, which will be luminescent in the UV and VUV regions. Such media are large bandgap crystals with luminescence emission in the ultraviolet region. The possibility of achieving ultraviolet luminescence of large bandgap crystals is currently explored with electron beam 1,2) (giving a high density of excitation) or X-ray sources 3,4). Vacuum ultraviolet luminescence of crystals of rare gases was also explored with synchrotron excitation. Recently, excitation of luminescence of several crystals was achieved with the help of VUV-lasers 6,7) which allow to achieve high densities of excitation in the region of fundamental absorption. Later, we shall report about the exploration of UV and VUV luminescence of crystals pumped by powerful VUV laser, about the observation of luminescence of crystals of oxides, pumped by powerful X-ray synchrotron radiation and we shall give estimations of achieving laser generation from large bandgap crystals, pumped by powerful X-ray synchrotron radiation. Results of our experiments and other works have made possible to estimate the possibilities of generation from several crystals, pumped by synchrotron radiation.