Capacitance allocation and its role in the performance of doubling-circuit pulsed gas lasers: its application to the N2 laser

An investigation of the optical output for all possible combinations between the capacitances, C₁ and C ₂, in a doubling circuit N₂ laser is presented. It is shown that a maximum optical output appears when C ₁=C₂ for constant total capacitance. The maximum value increases when the total capacitance increases and the system approaches saturation for capacitance values higher than 20 nF each. This behavior of the optical energy is due to a similar behavior of the current, which becomes maximum when the best coupling of the two loops of the system is achieved through capacitance equality, and the oscillatory behavior of the system is minimized. When this equality is disturbed, either with weak (C₁>C₂ ) or strong (C₂<C₁) coupling of the system, the current and optical outputs decrease. In both cases, the undesirable oscillatory behavior of the system increases. The electric parameters R₁,L₁ of the spark-gap loop and R₂,L₂ of the laser channel loop are calculated