  Continuous coherent radiation in the vacuum-ultraviolet at 122 nm
(Lyman-alpha) can be generated using sum-frequency mixing of three fundamental
laser beams in mercury vapour. One of the fundamental beams is at 254 nm
wavelength, which is close to the 6^1S_0-6^3P_1 resonance in mercury.
Experiments have been performed to investigate the effect of this one-photon
resonance on phasematching, absorption and the nonlinear yield. The efficiency
of continuous Lyman-alpha generation has been improved by a factor of 4.5.
