Nuclear Pumped Lasers,

A 3.5 MeV Dynamitron accelerator has been used to investigate low pressure mixtures of Kr-NF3, Xe-NF3, Kr-NF3-UF6, and Xe-NF3-UF6. The accelerator provides low intensity, guassian shaped, pulsed proton beams with FWHM pulse widths of 3 ns and repetition rates of 1 microsec to 32 ms. Emissions from the gas scintillation cell are observed with a single proton counting system. Under existing experimental conditions, the metastable reaction channel dominates the system kinetics, and analysis of experimental results gives formation rate constants, K1, of 1.7 x 10 to the -10th power ccsec and 5.5 x 10 to the -11th power ccsec for the reactions Kr NF3 to KrF NF2 and Xe NF3 to XeF NF2, respectively. The results of absolute conversion efficiency measurements show the Xe-NF3 system to be approximately an order of magnitude more efficient than the Kr-NF3 system. The addition of approximately 0.75 torr of UF6 to a 402 torr mixture of KrNF3 reduces the 2487 A emission by approximately 50. A 50 reduction in the 3525 A emission from a 404 torr mixture of XeNF3 is observed when 2 torr of UF6 are added. ad