Kinetics of oxygen discharges and I(2P1/2) excitation for EOIL

The electric oxygen-iodine laser (EOIL) concept uses an electric discharge plasma to generate an effluent flow containing singlet oxygen, O 2 (a 1 D), and atomic oxygen, O, which react with I 2 to excite the atomic iodine laser transition at 1.315 mm. This chemically rich system has unique characteristics, whose understanding requires systematic chemical kinetics investigation under carefully selected conditions to isolate the key reaction mechanisms. We describe a series of reacting flow measurements on the reactions of discharge-excited active-O 2 with I 2 , using a comprehensive suite of optical emission and absorption diagnostics to monitor the absolute concentrations of O 2 (a 1 D), O 2 (b 1 summation), O( 3 P), O 3 , I 2 , I( 2 P 3/2 ), I( 2 P 1/2 ), small-signal gain, and temperature. These multispecies measurements help to constrain the kinetics model of the system, and quantify the chemical loss mechanisms for I( 2 P 1/2 ).