SCIENTIFIC AND ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE

LABORATORY OF GAS LASERS

In October of 1969, simultaneously with opening of the Institute of Atmospheric Optics SB of Academy of Sciences of the USSR, at the Department of High Current Electronics headed by G.A. Mesyats there was established a Laboratory of Applied Quantum Electronics to be leaded by Yu.I. Bychkov. In 1977, with opening of the Institute of High Current Electronics, the Laboratory was renamed as Department of Gas Lasers, and since 1991 it is the Laboratory of Gas Lasers. Until 1996, Dr. Yu.I Bychkov headed the laboratory. Presently, Dr. V.F. Losev is the head of this subdivision. Currently, 2 Doctors of Science and 5 Candidates of Science work at the laboratory.

Scientific Activities

Investigations on gas laser physics, volume discharge combustion in laser gas mixtures, production of high-quality laser radiation.
Development and creation of widely adopted gas lasers.

The basic scientific achievements

In the field of gas discharge physics:

A number of investigations devoted to volume discharge combustion in СО₂, HF, and XeCl lasers of big volume have been carried out; the fields of steady-state and non-steady-state discharge combustion have been defined; instability occurrence mechanism has been studied and uniform efficient active media for such lasers have been obtained.
Not analogous in the world, one-dimensional and two-dimensional self-consistent models meant for calculations of excimer laser discharge non-equilibrium plasma have been created.

In the field of excimer laser physics:

Experimental and theoretical studies of electrical discharge and e-beam excitation conditions for excimer lasers were carried out and kinetic processes taking place in active media responsible for generation efficiency were defined; the operation modes providing ultimate efficiency were found and a close fit of experimental and theoretical results has been obtained.
Physical processes restricting obtain of diffraction divergence of radiation in excimer lasers and laser systems have been studied, and UV radiation beams with divergence below 10 mrad and energy of tens joules were obtained.

In the field of non-linear physics:

At SRS of XeCl laser radiation in hydrogen, a record number of lines (up to 70) has been obtained in visible spectral range and a record quantum efficiency of 95 % conversion into the first Stokes component at 353 nm has been reached, the limiting values for convergence and converted radiation line width have been defined.
At SBS of XeCl laser beam, the effect of spectral and spatial selection of low-coherent radiation was discovered and availability of such effect employment for increasing of excimer laser radiation coherence was offered.

In the field of lasers design:

A great number of gas lasers from UV (excimer, nitrogen) to IR (HF, СО₂) spectral ranges possessing a wide scale of pulse radiation energy of ~ 10^-3 – 10³ J have been created. Several unique wide-aperture XeCl lasers pumped by various methods, providing radiation pulses with various duration (50–300 ns) with energy above 10 J have been developed and built. One of the most powerful in the world, the power excimer laser system PELS-4 of pulsed energy of up to 200 J at 308 nm providing to obtain hundreds of kJ/cm² at the target has been built.

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