NUMERICAL-ANALYSIS OF THE ELECTRON-ENERGY DISTRIBUTION FUNCTION IN A CO2-LASER DISCHARGE

A new simplified approach to the numerical solution of the Boltzmann e quation in a collisional plasma is suggested and applied to the plasma of the fast-axial-flow CO2 laser. Our results of computation of the e lectron energy distribution function (EEDF) are shown to be consistent with the results of similar computations based on the ELENDIF package . It is pointed out that most superelastic collisions, dissociative at tachment of CO2, ionization of He, thermal translational motion of mol ecules and their rotation can be safely ignored in the computations of the EEDF. On the other hand the error in the estimate of the ratio of the external electric field to the molecular density is the main sour ce of error in the computation of the EEDF.