Calculation of the parameters of an active medium of an electron-beam-excited plasma laser

Calculations are made of the parameters of a plasma generated by an electron beam (j = 10–100 A/cm², V ~10 keV) bombarding a dense (10¹⁸–10¹⁹ cm^–3) gaseous mixture of helium and molecular hydrogen. The populations of the excited states of helium are calculated and the gain is computed for transitions between the states with n = 3 and n = 2. The results obtained show that it should be possible to build a quasicontinuously operating beam plasma laser using helium with impurities.