Investigation of Barium Laser Excitation Processes Using Laser-Induced-Perturbation Technique

We report experiments in which the active medium of a pulsed discharge-excited barium laser is illuminated by dye laser radiation, tuned to produce significant changes in the populations of selected states of neutral barium which are the upper and lower levels of barium laser transitions. The resulting perturbations to the discharge-excited laser output have enabled excitation processes relating to laser emission at 1.13, 1.50, 2.55, 2.92, and 4.72 μm from barium vapor to be identified.