Rf-excited waveguide phase-coupled supermode-output CO 2 laser

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper , an RF excited waveguide CO2 laser with a supermode output has been experimentally studied. At a distance over 4 meters , a stable far field distribution with a suppressedsingle peak has been obtained without using any of optical focusing elementsINTRODUCTIONRecently , researchers have paid their great interest in phase coupled lasers in the aim to achievethe output of laser beam with the better spatial coherence and high brightness, particularly in the area of semiconductor lasers and RF excited waveguide lasers, the variety of approaches have been proposed. In this paper ,we shall present an RF excited waveguide phase coupled supermode output CO2 laser. With this structure, we have demonstrated a stable phase coupled supermode output. At a distance over 4 meters , a suppressed far field interference distribution with single central peak has beenobtained without using any of optical focusing elements. In comparision with the spatial incoherentlaser output ,the suppressed ratio of the far field beam width of the phase coupled spatial coherent laseroutput is 8. 5. The maximum output power achieved is over 44 watts from an only 20 cm gain length.The maximum efficiency is 16%.EXPERIMENTThe schematic diagram of the waveguide laser with supermode output is shown in Fig. 1. The top66