Heavy-Ion Beam Pumped UV Laser

Abstract

Accelerators are mainly built to study collisions between the projectiles and individual particles in the target. There is, however, also an application of heavy ion accelerators where collective effects in the target such as heating, heat induced expansion, and compression of the target material is studied. Such experiments are for example performed by the plasma physics group at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany [1]. The experiment described here is closely related to these experiments and aims at the production of high population densities of electronically excited species in gas targets. It benefits from the efforts to produce high energy density in matter because it also requires pulsed high intensity ion beams with excellent beam quality. One particular goal is to study conditions where the target is not in thermodynamic equilibrium, and a clear indication that such a situation is obtained is the observation of laser effect from the target.