Scalable volume of argon metastables in a pulsed discharge with preionization for lasing medium

Pulsed discharges are a promising technology for producing the high density of rare-gas metastable atoms required for optically-pumped rare gas laser systems. It is easy to generate high-density and small volume plasma under pulsed discharge, but it is a challenge to generate such metastable densities by large volume pulsed discharge. We demonstrated for the first time that a pulsed discharge device incorporating preionization generated high-intensity fields suitable for generating a dense gas of argon 1s5 states. With the help of radio-frequency (RF) preionization, the volume of plasma expands using continuous RF supply at 13.56 MHz. The region of metastable atoms was observed in the pulsed discharge and shown to have an estimated density in excess of 1×1012 cm−3 within a volume of 3.0×1.1×0.2 cm3.