Quenching optical breakdown with an applied electric field
- 15 May 1990
- journal article
- Published by Optica Publishing Group in Optics Letters
- Vol. 15 (11) , 601-603
- https://doi.org/10.1364/ol.15.000601
Abstract
Application of an external electric field across the focal volume of a high-pressure gas cell can increase the threshold for optical breakdown by electrostatic purification of the gas and by removal of free electrons from the laser focal volume in times that are short relative to the interpulse separation and/or the laser pulse duration. Experiments with 1.06-μm pulse trains (200-psec duration with a 7.5-nsec interpulse separation) demonstrate that electrostatic purification effectively quenches all optical breakdown in 20 atm of SF6 for the highest available single-pulse fluences of 140 J cm−2 (~0.7 TW cm−2).Keywords
This publication has 6 references indexed in Scilit:
- Beam cleanup with stimulated Raman scattering in the intensity-averaging regimeJournal of the Optical Society of America B, 1986
- Multiline Raman beam combinationJournal of the Optical Society of America B, 1986
- Efficient stimulated Brillouin backscattering of multiple pulses in the highly transient regimeApplied Physics Letters, 1986
- Calculation of SF6transport coefficients from revised dataJournal of Physics D: Applied Physics, 1982
- Avalanche initiating electron produced by laser-induced tunnelingIEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, 1977
- Raman lasers (review)Soviet Journal of Quantum Electronics, 1974