Metal vapor excimer laser. Quarterly progress report for period February 1, 1978--April 30, 1978

Major effort was expended in the final assembly of the gain experiment apparatus; this phase had been delayed by some magnet and discharge tube problems which have now been solved. The addition of the discharge circuitry, now underway, is the last step before gain and discharge tests. The metal testing oven is complete and preliminary tests are underway which show encouraging results concerning the compatibility of mercury vapor and Inconel and 316 SS. Some initial modeling was done with the Boltzmann/kinetics code which demonstrates CdHg production efficiency as a function of E/N