The paper is a review of gas lasers pumped by runaway electrons preionized diffuse discharge (REP DD). The various conditions under which the discharge occurs are described. It is shown that in the presence of the highly non-uniform electric field strength distribution in a gap filled with dense gases, a stable diffuse discharge is ignited without the use of additional sources of ionizing radiation. This, in turn, is achieved by using discharge gaps, in which at least one of the electrodes has a small radius of curvature (e.g., “point-plane”, “blade-blade” and so on), and high-voltage (10s–100s ​kV) pulses with a (sub)nanosecond rise time. With this method of forming the discharge the runaway electrons can produce X-ray quanta in the gap and, together with them, provide preionization of the laser gas mixture. The dense nonequilibrium low-temperature plasma of this discharge can remain diffuse during the entire excitation time, including single pulse excitation and repetitive mode at the voltage pulse repetition rate up to several kHz. The properties and parameters of REP DD plasma are considered. Experimental and simulated characteristics of stimulated emission of REP DD plasma in various gaseous media are presented.

本文是对逸散电子预电离弥散放电（REP DD）泵浦的气体激光器的综述。描述了发生放电的各种条件。结果表明，在充满致密气体的间隙中存在高度不均匀的电场强度分布时，无需使用其他电离辐射源就可以引发稳定的扩散放电。这又通过使用放电间隙来实现，在放电间隙中，至少一个电极具有较小的曲率半径（例如，“点平面”，“叶片-叶片”等）和高电压（ 10s–100s kV）脉冲，具有（亚）纳秒的上升时间。通过这种形成放电的方法，失控电子可以在间隙中产生X射线量子，并与它们一起提供激光气体混合物的预电离。这种放电的致密非平衡低温等离子体可以在整个激励时间内保持扩散状态，包括单脉冲激励和以高达几kHz的电压脉冲重复频率进行的重复模式。考虑了REP DD等离子体的特性和参数。介绍了在各种气态介质中REP DD等离子体受激发射的实验和模拟特征。