A 193 nm excimer laser and a custom fabricated cylindrical lens system is used to produce a plasma sheet of 8 cm×30 cm×0.4 cm in tetrakis(dimethylamino)ethylene (TMAE), a low ionization energy organic gas. Plasma density variation due to photon absorption is studied by scanning the filling pressure of TMAE between 12 and 150 mTorr. A high density (n≥2.0×1013cm−3), low temperature (Te≊0.8 eV) plasma sheet of 4 mm thickness is obtained with less than 50% spatial density variation over the 30 cm axial length. Charge recombination is found to be the dominant process for t≤1.2 &mgr;s with the plasma diffusion playing a perturbational role. A one‐dimensional plasma model is utilized to model the experimental plasma data by treating the diffusion as a perturbation. This study shows that the recombination coefficient is 1.8±0.1×10−7cm3 s−1and the diffusion coefficient is 2.8±0.4×104cm2 s−1. The plasma sheet has attractive properties for a microwave agile mirror. ©1995 American Institute of Physics.