Classical absorption and heat conduction in low-irradiance, long-pulse CO2-laser-plasma interactions

Abstract
A self‐regulating model of classical collisional absorption and heat conduction is shown to adequately explain cold‐electron temperatures measured in low‐irradiance, long‐pulse CO2‐laser‐plasma experiments at Culham. The absorption predicted by the model is a large fraction of the very high experimentally measured absorption and the predicted density scale length agrees very well with the experimental value.