Nobelprize winner N. Basov and his collaborators collected in this volume a vast amount of systemized experimental data and of theoretical results on chemical lasers thus placing it inbetween a textbook and a hand- book. The introduction is followed by a presentation of the fundamentals of chemical lasers. Subsequent chapters deal with specific types of chemical lasers including the most recent developments opening the road towards ecologically clean lasers.

Nobelprize winner N. Basov and his collaborators collected in this volume a vast amount of systemized experimental data and of theoretical results on chemical lasers thus placing it inbetween a textbook and a hand- book. The introduction is followed by a presentation of the fundamentals of chemical lasers. Subsequent chapters deal with specific types of chemical lasers including the most recent developments opening the road towards ecologically clean lasers.

1. Introduction.- 2. Fundamentals of Chemical Laser Kinetics.- 2.1 Qualitative Analysis of Chemical Laser Operation.- 2.2 Nonequilibrium Excitation in Chemical Reactions.- 2.3 Population Inversion and Amplification of Radiation in Yibrational-Rotational Transitions.- 2.4 Elementary Vibrational Relaxation Processes.- 2.5 General Equations Describing Physico-Chemical.- Processes Occurring in the Laser Medium.- 2.6 Calculation of the Generation and Amplification of Radiation in Multi-Level Chemical Lasers in Quasistationary Approximation.- 3. Kinetics and Numerical Analysis of Chain-Reaction Chemical Lasers (Pulsed Mode).- 3.1 Brief Review of the Theory.- 3.2 H2-F2 System.- 3.3 D2 - F2 - CO2 System.- 4. Pulsed Chemical Lasers.- 4.1 Requirements for the Parameters of Chemically-Pumped Pulsed Laser Systems.- 4.2 Initiation of Pulsed Chemical Lasers.- 4.3 Laser Mixture Preparation Problems.- 4.4 Non-Chain-Reaction Pulsed Hydrogen-Fluoride Lasers..- 4.5 H2(D2)-F2 Lasers.- 4.6 D2 - F2 - CO2 Lasers.- 4.7 Effect of Additives Accelerating the Hydrogen Fluorination Chain Reaction.- 4.8 Beam Divergence in Hydrogen-Fluoride Lasers.- 4.9 Pulsed Chemical Lasers Operating on Vibrational Overtones of HF and DF Molecules.- 4.10 Amplifier-Mode Operation of Pulsed Hydrogen-Fluoride Lasers.- 4.11 High-Repetition-Rate Operation of Chemical Lasers.- 4.12 Pulsed Chemical Lasers Based on Chain Reactions Other than the Hydrogen-Fluorine Reaction.- 4.13 Current Status of Pulsed Chemical Lasers.- 5. Continuous-Wave Chemical Lasers.- 5.1 Physical Principles of Operation of CWCL's.- 5.2 Purely Chemical Subsonic DF-CO2 Lasers.- 5.3 Supersonic HF (DF) Lasers..- A Review of Experimental Work.- 5.4 Principal Power Performance Features of Supersonic CWCL's.- 5.5 Prospects for the Development of theDF-CO2 and HF CWCL's.- 5.6 Other Types of CWCL's.- 5.7 Other Possible CWCL's Versions.- 6. Oxygen-Iodine Chemical Laser - a New Candidate for Engineering Applications.- 6.1 Experimental Results.- 6.2 Singlet Oxygen Generators.- 6.3 Kinetics of the Processes Occurring in the Active Medium of OICL.- 6.4 Pulsed OICUs.- 7. Photon Branching in Chain Reactions and IR-Radiation Initiated Chemical Lasers.- References.

The rapid development of lasers in the past few decades has led to their application in almost every field of science and technology. The idea that it should be possible to convert the energy released in chemical reactions of chemical lasers directly into coherent radiation resulted in the advent in the 1960s. These first chemical lasers, however, consumed much more energy to initiate the reaction than they emitted. The search for more ef ficient chemical lasing led to the utilization of chain reactions. However, care had to be taken to maintain the appropriate pressure. In 1970, it was demonstrated that the operation of chemical lasers at atmospheric pressure was also feasible, making it easier and cheaper to construct them. One of the advantages of chemical lasers is the wide range of radia tion wavelengths emitted by them: 1.3 - 26 ~m. The vibrational frequen cies of many molecules fall within this range so that they may convenient ly be used for the operation of such lasers. Progress in the development of chemical lasers is intimately con nected with advances in related fields such as gas dynamics, chemical reaction kinetics, and research into the energy relaxation and transfer processes in molecular systems.