GENERALIZED SCALING OF AN ELECTROGASDYNAM IC CO COMBUSTION-PRODUCT LASER

A method is proposed for generalised scaling of a CO laser with a high -frequency discharge in a supersonic stream of combustion products. Th is laser can operate efficiently without an electron gun and without c ontinuous formation of large amounts of the CO mixture. A theoretical analysis, based on simultaneous solution of a system of equations desc ribing the kinetics of relaxation processes and gas dynamics, does not yield the explicit parametric dependences of the main parameters or a CO laser. However, acceptable assumptions can be made and these allow the use of general similarity laws for the scaling of a cw electric-d ischarge CO laser with a high-velocity stream of a mixture of CO and m onatomic gases. The results of such scaling can be generalised to a CO mixture produced by combustion of a chemical fuel by calculations of the energy balance of electrons in a discharge that takes place in com bustion products. After determination of the fraction of the electric- field energy acquired by the vibrational levels of the CO molecules, t he main parameters of an electrogasdynamic CO combustion-product laser can be calculated with the aid of similarity laws derived for cw CO l asers with electric-discharge excitation of a high-velocity stream of a mixture of CO and monatomic gases.