Plasma Expansion Under Heating by a Co2 Laser Pulse

This paper treats the expansion of a gas breakdown plasma produced in argon by the focused radiation from a high-voltage transient-pumped CO2 laser. With the long pulses attainable from such pulsed CO2 lasers, a transition is observed in the mechanism of expansion from a radiation-driven detonation to a thermal expansion. The implications of this observation for CO2 laser heating of plasmas are discussed.