Reconstruction of energy spectrum of runaway electrons in nanosecond-pulse discharges in atmospheric air

This paper presents an experimental investigation into the runaway electron spectrum with a gas diode composed of a rough spherical cathode and plane anode under the excitation of a nanosecond-pulse generator in atmospheric air.The runaway electron beams are measured by a collector covered with aluminum foil with a thickness from 0μm(mesh grid)to 50μm.The energy spectrum is calculated by an improved Tikhonov regularization called the maximum entropy method.The experimental results show that the transition state of the discharge consisted of multiple streamer channels stretched from the cathode with glow-like plasma uniformly distributed over the anode.The number of runaway electrons measured by the collector is in the order of 1010 in atmospheric pressure air with a gap spacing of 5 mm and applied voltages of70–130 kV.The cathode with a rough surface creates a more inhomogeneous electric field and larger emission site for the runaway electrons around the cathode,providing conditions for the coexistence of filamentary streamer and diffuse discharge.The reconstructed spectra show that the energy distribution of the runaway electrons presents a single-peak profile with energies from eU_(m/2)–2 eU_(m/3)(U_(m)is maximal voltage across the gap).

Nanosecond-pulsed, dual-wavelength, passively Q-switched ytterbium-doped bulk laser based on few-layer MoS2 saturable absorber

A compact saturable absorber mirror（SAM） based on few-layer molybdenum disulfide（MoS2） nanoplatelets was fabricated and successfully used as an efficient saturable absorber（SA） for the passively Q-switched solid-state laser at 1 μm wavelength. Pulses as short as 182 ns were obtained from a ytterbium-doped（Yb:LGGG） bulk laser Q-switched by the MoS2 SAM, which we believe to be the shortest one ever achieved from the MoS2 SAs-based Q-switched bulk lasers. A maximum average output power of 0.6 W was obtained with a slope efficiency of 24%,corresponding to single pulse energy up to 1.8 μJ. In addition, the simultaneous dual-wavelength Q-switching at 1025.2 and 1028.1 nm has been successfully achieved. The results indicate the promising potential of few-layer MoS2 nanoplatelets as nonlinear optical switches for achieving efficient pulsed bulk lasers.