Active plasma diagnostics with laser radiation

The present work demonstrates the possibility of using the critical saturation energy of absorption from the ground state of an atomic system for determining the concentration of absorbing centers in a plasma and for estimating the temperature of the plasma heating under the effect of a pulse of laser radiation. The method is established on the basis of the solution of the kinetic and balance equations for potassium atoms subjected to the action of a powerful electromagnetic wave. The method was experimentally tested with a potassium-enriched plasma probed by the emission of an organic-compound laser excited in the region of the potassium resonance doublet.