Lists citations with abstracts for aerospace related reports obtained from world wide sources and announces documents that have recently been entered into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Database.

There have been two major review articles on the iodine laser in the last ll seven years, liThe Photochemical Iodine Laser by K. Hohla and K. Kompa (Handbook of Chemical Lasers, edited by R. Gross and J. Bott, Wi 1 ey, New York,1976) and a SANDIA report (No. 78-1071, 1978) entitled liThe Atomic Iodine Laserll. Since then, a large body of new material has been published, and practical experience has been gained with large iodine laser systems in Garchi ng (ASTERIX II I) and in the USSR. These 1 asers have now become very reliable tools, especially in fusion-oriented plasma experiments, which represent their main field of application. They can deliver powers in excess of many terawatts per beam and are thus also suited for use in other areas such as X-ray lasers, incoherent X-ray sources, compression of matter and its behaviour at very high densities. The physics of the iodine laser is now rather well understood, and its technology has reached a standard adequate for the construction of large scale systems in the multi-hundred kJ range. In view of this new situation, we thought it useful to document the present state of the art ina book. Its contents and the literature cited therein have been chosen to cover those areas which are of main concern in the design and operation of pulsed high-power iodine lasers.

This book focuses mainly on the spectroscopy of laser materials, physics of laser materials, laser crystals and laser glasses. The spectroscopic and laser properties of rare earth and transition metal ion-doped solid state materials are systematically described based on modern quantum optics. The aim of this book is to relate the laser and spectroscopic properties to the structure and chemical composition of materials. It emphasises the nonlinear optical effects in laser materials, which are widely used in high power laser systems. The development of advanced solid state laser devices depends greatly on new laser materials. Much progress has been made recently in the development of new laser materials, and this is summarized in the book.

Bringing together scattered literature from a range of sources, Laser Spectroscopy and ItsApplications clearly elucidates the tools and concepts of this dynamic area, and providesextensive bibliographies for further study.Distinguished experts in their respective fields discuss resonance photoionization, laser absorption,laser-induced breakdown, photodissociation, Raman scattering, remote sensing,and laser-induced fluorescence. The book also incorporates an overview of the semiclassicaltheory of atomic and molecular spectra.Combining background at an intermediate level with an in-depth discussion of specifictechniques, Laser Spectroscopy and Its Applications is essential reading for laser and opticalscientists and engineers; analytical chemists; health physicists; researchers in optical,chemical, pharmaceutical, and metallurgical industries. It will also prove useful for upperlevelundergraduate and graduate students of laser spectroscopy and its applications, andin-house seminars and short courses offered by firms and professional societies.