Intense superradiant emission at 496 μm from optically pumped methyl fluoride

Abstract

Intense superradiant emission has been observed from methyl fluoride excited by 0.6-MW pulses from a high-pressure CO2 laser. Pulses of ∼ 1 kW with a duration of ∼ 150 nsec have been obtained from a 5-m-long 40-mm-diam cell containing 0.7 Torr of methyl fluoride. This output represents an efficiency of converting infrared photons to far-infrared photons of ∼ 5%. Evidence for partial waveguiding in the cell and for phase-coherent amplification are presented.