サブミリ波レーザーとその応用

抄録

Present status of wavelength-fixed and wavelength-tunable lasers in the submillimeter-wave region is reviewed. The wavelength-fixed lasers include the discharge-pumped gas lasers and the optically-pumped gas lasers. The latter lasers have over 1, 500 lasing lines in the submillimeter-wave region, and are described in detail. The tunable submillimeter-wave lasers and coherent sources are overviewed, which are composed of semiconductor lasers, differencefrequency generators, optical parametric oscillator, two-photon mixing to generate the side band and Raman lasers. Applications of those lasers to a) the laser-isotope separation of UF₆ molecules, b) the fusion-plasma diagnostics on electron density, ion temperature, etc. and c) the astronomy to detect interstellar molecules are discussed.