High-power Ar-N2transfer laser at 3577 Å

A peak laser power of 0.5 MW with an estimated efficiency of 0.2 percent has been obtained at 3577 Å from a mixture of 92 psia Ar and 8 psia N
2
which was excited by an
E
-beam of 400 A/cm
²
at 1.3 MeV in a 20-ns pulse. A saturation intensity of ∼100 kW/cm
²
was deduced and a beam divergence of 10 mrad was measured from the laser having a 10-cm gain length.