Effect of inelastic energy loss on CO2 laser breakdown of gases

Abstract
The pressure dependence of the threshold energy for CO2 laser gas breakdown in helium and nitrogen has been measured in the pressure range 40–70 Torr. The striking difference in the pressure dependence for the two gases is a clear manifestation of the effect of inelastic energy losses upon the avalanche breakdown process. This difference can be predicted by simple physical arguments or by scaling results from dc gas breakdown experiments to CO2 frequency.
Keywords

This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit: