Far-field beam quality evaluation of high-power unstable resonators TEA CO2 Laser

Abstract

High average power pulsed TEA CO₂ lasers have many important applications, such as laser manufacturing, military applications, but there rarely have reports about the theoretical and experimental studies on the virtual confocus resonator of pulsed TEA CO₂ laser, especially its far field optical quality. Based on the real date of the unstable resonator modified by the stable resonator of high power TEA CO₂, three common theoretical evaluations and analyzes were conducted and compared with the measured results of far field light intensity distribution with 2 kW designed unstable resonator laser with the block ratio is ε=0.404. The results show that the unstable resonator can obtain near diffraction limitation and high optical quality beam. The β factor is smaller than 4 times than the stable resonator. Furthermore, the smaller block factor can make higher power in bucket for the unstable resonator. The comprehensive prediction and evaluation of designed unstable resonator need to synthetically use these three theoretical methods of the evaluations. The simulation results, with considering the optical aberration, heat distortion and atmospheric effect, agree well with the real recording image by the infrared imaging system in the distance of 300m. The research of this paper has very important reference value for evaluating the tactical effectiveness and optimization design of high power TEA CO₂ laser system with different unstable resonators.