Long pulse electron beam excited XeF laser

Long pulse operation of the XeF laser has been achieved with a short gain length and medium intensity electron beam excitation for both Ar/Xe/NF₃ and Ne/Xe/NF₃ mixtures. Use of Ne as diluant strongly lower the threshold for lasing and give an important increase in extracted power. For a total mixture pressure of 2 atm about 6 mJ of 3500 Å radiation was obtained in a 400 ns fwhm pulse limited only by e-beam pulse length.