Stepwise excitation - A limiting process in pulsed gas lasers

A general and flexible computer model is used to reveal the importance of stepwise excitation to higher-lying copper energy levels as a rate-limiting process in the pulsed copper vapor laser. The model has been constructed to assess the potential and aid in the development of pulsed gas lasers. Good agreement has been obtained between the model's results and experimental copper vapor laser output pulse shapes and energies as a function of input voltage. Earlier suggestions of substantial ionization of copper and collisional mixing of copper atoms in upper and lower laser levels as limiting processes are not confirmed.