VUV laser in the Lyman band of molecular hydrogen pumped by fstitanium-sapphire laser pulses |
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Authors: | Insam S Tommasini R Fill EE |
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Affiliation: | Max-Planck-Inst. fur Quantenopt., Garching bei Munchen; |
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Abstract: | We report lasing at 160 nm in the Lyman band of molecular hydrogen. The laser is pumped by 200 mJ/150 fs pulses from the ATLAS titanium-sapphire laser at our institute. The pump pulses are focused at an angle of incidence of 60° onto a 9-cm-long gold target to a line focus, generating traveling-wave excitation. With 80 mbar of hydrogen in the target chamber we measure an average gain of 1.1 cm-1 and achieve a total gain-length product of 10. The evaluation of the far-field pattern shows that the beam originates from a region with an electron density of 5×1015 cm-3. A simple model of the H2 laser is presented which explains the main part of our observations and supports a pump mechanism of photoelectron pumping |
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