Low cost nitrogen laser design for dye laser pumping

A pulsed cross-field molecular nitrogen laser (3371 Å) has been simply constructed from two plate glass strips 5 cm by 1.2 m. During operation twenty 500-pF capacitors evenly spaced along the channel are charged from a 0.012-µF storage capacitor by a thyratron at up to 30 Hz. This distributed charge is available for discharge when the gas breakdown starts. The flowing gas laser produces a 160-kW, 10-nsec (full-width half-maximum) light pulse when operated at 15 kV and at a pressure of 20 Torr. The laser has successfully pumped a tunable dye laser.