Mercury bromide reconstitution in the HgBr laser system

The major effort was to perform experimental life studies of an UV pre-ionized mercury bromide laser and reconstitute the reaction products such as Hg and Hg2Br2. During past years, we had conducted extensive experimental lifetime studies of a small scale HgBr laser. From these experiments, we selected suitable materials for laser construction, developed procedures to fabricate and fill the laser tube, and finally, we lifetested the laser for over 5 million shots. Those results indicate that pinhole-free gold plated nickel is chemically inert to the HgBr2 discharge and can be used for constructing long-lived high prf HgBr lasers. However, for a large system its is difficult to plate the base metal with pinhole free gold. It is this motivation for developing a HgBr2 recovery system. In this report, we describe the construction of a long-lived, high prf HgBr laser with a built-in HgBr2 reconstitution system and present experimental test data which confirm our theoretical predictions. Finally we recommend the future design of a practical 10 to the 10th power shots HgBr laser.