Dr. E.A. Ballik

Professor Emeritus
Departments of Engineering Physics
and Physics & Astronomy

McMaster University
1280 Main Street West, Hamilton
Ontario, Canada  L8S 4L7

email:  ballik@mcmaster.ca
voice:  (905) 525-9140 x 24615
fax:   (905) 527-8409

B.Sc. (Queen's), D. Phil. (Oxford)

Research Interests

Gas Lasers

The research is concerned primarily with the investigation of gas laser systems and with applications of these systems. Most of the effort is directed towards excimer lasers, with some effort related to CO₂ and N₂ lasers. Both theoretical and experimental research problems are addressed. A major portion of the research effort is concerned with investigating the mechanisms of discharge excitation and gain production in order to improve current laser systems and to develop new ones.

In addition, there is a substantial effort to develop practical laser systems for industrial, medical and scientific applications.

The excimer lasers, which typically employ rare gas monohalides such as KrF, XeCl and ArF, are capable of providing high-intensity short-duration pulses in the near or vacuum ultraviolet. CO₂ lasers, which operate mainly in the wavelength region about 10.6 micro-m, operate either pulsed or continuously. N₂ lasers provide pulsed operation in the near ultraviolet part of the spectrum.

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Publications

S.B. Hassal and E.A. Ballik, "Observation of Continuous D->X and B->X XeCl Excimer Fluorescence in a Binary-Gas Microwave Discharge", J. Appl. Phys., 70, 1042 (1991).

S.B. Hassal and E.A. Ballik, "Observation of Continuous KrCl Excimer Fluorescence in Microwave Discharges Employing Binary Mixtures of Kr and Cl₂", Can. J. Phys., 69, 699 (1991).

E.A. Ballik and W. Wan, "Development and Analysis of a Simple Model for an IR Sensor", SPIE Vol. 1488, Infrared Imaging Systems: Design, Analysis, Modeling and Testing II, 249 (1991).

Z.M. Xia and E.A. Ballik, "Investigations of a Compact Short-Pulse Discharge-Excited XeCl Laser", Opt. Commum. 98, 172 (1993).

W.Y. Lee, Z.M. Xia and E.A. Ballik, "Formation of the XeCl exciplex via double crossings of potential-energy curves", Molec. Phys. 82, 165 (1994).