Аннотации:
In this paper a new method of initiation of the electric discharge in gases by nonresonant laser radiation. The method proposed is the following. The LR is focused in the middle between two electrodes. The first vibration level of H2 is effectively populated due to the conversion into the first Stokes. The gas density decrease caused by the thermalization of the vibration energy leads to the spark discharge. There is a delay between the LR pulse and the current pulse since the heating time evolution is defined by the relaxation of the deposited vibration energy. The measuring of the delay allows one to estimate the time constant of the vibration-translation relaxation. The results from first experiments on measuring the vibration-translation relaxation time constant in H2 at room temperature are obtained.