Abstract

It is well known that stimulated rotational Raman scattering (SRRS) in atmospheric nitrogen presents a. limitation to the propagation of high-intensity laser radiation through long air paths.^1-3 A method that has sometimes been proposed to mitigate this problem in laser fusion facilities is to replace part of the air path with a breathable mixture of oxygen and a monatomic gas such as argon. However, some earlier calculations,⁴ which have now been extended and verified by experiment, indicate that the peak SRRS gain of oxygen in atmospheric air is approximately 77% that of nitrogen in air at the wavelength of Nd:glass lasers, and increases slightly, to about 80%, at the third harmonic.

© 1996 Optical Society of America