US-FRG Cooperative Research on the Development of Short Wavelength Lasers Pumped by Heavy Ion Beams

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This award supports Dr. Daniel E. Murnick of Rutgers University to collaborate in physics research with Dr. Andreas Ulrich of the Physics Department of the Technical University of Munich. They will study the optical emission from matter excited by heavy ion beams, with the goal of developing new short wavelength lasers. New spectroscopy in the vacuum ultraviolet region, from heavy ion beam pumped gases, will be studied with measureable gain possible on selected transitions. Planning and experimental design will take place both in the U.S. and West Germany. Experiments will be conducted at the GSI heavy ion accelerator facility in Darmstadt, West Germany, which has unique capabilities for these studies. Data analysis and evaluation will also be carried out in both countries. Reciprocal visits will facilitate both the experimental and the analytical phases of the project. Heavy ion beam pumping provides a laser excitation technique which is potentially significant for producing short wavelength high power lasers. The study of the physics of the excited state formation and decay until now has been the most important area of current research. Recent accelerator advances now allow the production of very intensive, well focused beams which are useful both for heavy ion inertial confinement fusion and short wavelength laser physics research. The proposed collaboration will use a unique new heavy ion synchrotron, the SIS, just completed in Darmstadt, West Germany, to probe exciting new potential short wavelength laser physics and sources. The research should lead to important new fundamental results, through the discovery and study of new physics of heavy ion interactions in dense plasmas.