Repetitively pulsed cryogenically cooled quasi-sealed-off slab RF discharge first-overtone CO laser

Abstract

A slab first-overtone CO laser of improved design excited by repetitively pulsed RF discharge was researched and developed. Its quasi-sealed-off operation appeared to be possible only by using active gas mixture composition with extremely high content of oxygen — up to 50 % with respect to CO concentration. Average output power of the first-overtone CO laser came up to ~2 W with the efficiency of ~2 %. The laser spectrum obtained by using three sets of output couplers consisted of more than 100 vibrational–rotational spectral lines in 28 vibrational first-overtone bands of CO molecule within 2.55÷3.90 μm wavelength range. The number of laser radiation pulses which could be produced by the laser in sealed-off mode of operation (without gas mixture renovation) reached ~5×105 at the averaged output power near its maximum, and ~106 at lower (near its half-maximum) averaged output power. Special features of laser radiation temporal behavior were discussed. Under repetitively pulse pump with repetition rate from 300 up to 7500 Hz, a temporal profile of the CO laser radiation changed from the train of time-separated laser pulses with high peak power to quasi-CW mode of operation.