Influence of the mixture composition on the characteristics of a high-power XeCl laser excited by an electron beam

Experimental and theoretical investigations were made of the influence of the HCl and Xe concentrations in a mixture on the delay time and duration of 150-J output pulses from an XeCl laser. A method for numerical calculations of the spatial distribution of the pump power in the active medium was developed and applied. A mathematical modeling of the physical processes in the active medium was carried out. It was found that the delay and the duration of the output pulses depended strongly on the Xe and HCl concentrations in the mixture. The main process governing the dependences of these parameters on the mixture composition was the absorption of laser radiation by rare-gas molecular ions, by Cl ^– ions, and by Xe₂Cl molecules.