Single-photon counting system for measuring laser parameters.

A single-photon counting system has been developed for measuring gas laser parameters. A linear accelerator provides nanosecond-wide pulses of heavy charged particles which are injected into a specially designed cell. The charged particles excite gas mixtures, and the temporal response of the emitted radiation is observed as a function of wavelength. The resulting data is analyzed to obtain pertinent parameters such as excited-state lifetimes, reaction rate constants, and quenching rate constants. At the present time nuclear pumper laser candidate gases are being examined.