ABSTRACT
The theoretical research of self-contained lasers was started in 1967 by Leonard [1]. The first analytical solution for the output characteristics of lasers of this type was obtained in [2]. The decisive factor of the possibility of analytical solutions in [2] of the problem of the characteristics of the lasing of the self-contained laser was the use in [2] of the saturated power approximation [3], based on the assumption of the equality of the populations of laser levels. In [3,4,5], this approach has been successfully used to calculate the characteristics of ultraviolet lasing of a nitrogen laser (337.1 nm band). The principal drawback of [2] is that in it, as in [1], the authors used a closed three-level scheme of the metal atom, which ignores the possibility of settlement of the laser levels by electrons up (to higher levels in the continuum). However, as was shown in [6], the population settlement process by electron impact of the upper laser levels up have a decisive influence on the lasing characteristics of the laser at self-terminating transitions of metal atoms, which makes the closed three-level scheme unacceptable to describe the kinetics of excitation and generation of self-contained lasers.
