Plasma lasers

Aspects of the theory of recombination relaxation of a low-temperature plasma are examined, along with the physics of plasma lasers. Attention is given to population kinetics of excited levels in atoms and ions, hydrodynamic phenomena, the heat balance of a recombining nonequilibrium plasma, and properties of a dense plasma produced by fast charged particles. Questions of direct relevance to plasma lasers are considered, including those involving kinetic population-inversion mechanisms in a recombining nonequilibrium plasma, lasing at photodissociative transitions in diatomic molecules, and problems in the production of laser reactors and X-ray lasers. Results are analyzed for experiments in which lasing was achieved in recombining nonequilibrium plasmas (in particular, experiments on alkaline-earth-metal ion lasers and molecular-dissociation lasers).