Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2009
Sodium laser blow-off plasma of low temperature (in the 1-eV range) is generated by laser intensities of 108–5.109 W cm−2. Imprisonment of resonant laser light has been observed. These experiments show that basic processes of interaction of radiation with level populations can be studied in the visible range, where the atomic levels have longer lifetimes than the ionic ones in hot plasmas, corresponding to X-ray generation. The imprisonment and resonant effects with various experimental parameters were investigated together with the nonresonant scattering on fragments.