XeCl*-laser discharge instabilities at high gas pressures

Theoretical investigation of streamer characteristics in Ne–Xe–HCl pulsed high-pressure discharges

“…The balance of electron production and loss, in preionized discharges for excimer lamps and lasers, is strongly influenced by the halogen concentration in the mixture due to the dominant electron loss process, which is the dissociative attachment of electrons to halogen molecule [5,10,14,15,18,[30][31][32][33][34]. To know the effect of the gas mixture composition on the streamer's characteristics, we performed calculations for five concentrations of halogen HCl: 0.044, 0.13, 0.26, 0.36, and 0.5%.…”

“…Despite these remarkable proprieties, XeCl laser suffers from some limitations; when sustained by highpressure discharges, it is subject to instabilities. The instability mechanism is assumed to result from the following circumstances: (a) streamers can appear near each electrode and lead to arcing during the formation of the plasma [14]; (b) once the plasma is formed, chemical kinetic instabilities can lead to plasma filamentation due to volume instability known as halogen depletion instability [15][16][17][18]. Experimental investigations of XeCl lasers have proved that the instabilities occur before the end of laser emission [19][20][21].…”