In this paper, the influence of the operating parameters on the performance of a waveguide-CO2 laser was investigated. The output power versus discharge current, gas pressure, and gas mixture ratio were measured using a different tube design. Also, it is observed that the laser output wavelengths vary as the discharge current changes. The obtained maximum powers are ∼14.5 W in a tube of diameter 3 mm and length 70 cm at the pressure 50 mbar, using the active medium with two discharge regions.
This paper presents the effect of anode number on the operating parameters in a fast-axial-flow cw CO2 laser. The discharge stability and uniformity, input power, output temperature at tube exit, and output power of the laser have been investigated experimentally for different anode numbers.
A number of laser transitions in the region of 12-13 μm have been obtained by optical pumping of NH3 molecule using a tunable TEA CO2 laser. By studying several different experimental arrangements, it is shown that the optimum pure NH3 gas pressure at room temperature is about 5 mbar. Moreover, some buffer gasses such as N2, H2 and He were employed and it was found that He is the most efficient gas for which the maximum efficiency up to 8% with the mixture of NH3: He =7:16 was obtained. In this condition, the maximum energy per pulse of 125 mJ was achieved. The tunable operation of this laser was established in two distinct wavelengths of 12.812 μm and 12.08 μm.
By coupling a CW C02 and a TEA CO2 laser through a grating simultaneously used for both resonators, without any additional optical elements, the CW laser radiation was injected without loss into the TEA CO2 laser optical cavity. Thus, longitudinal and transverse single mode operation of the TEA CO2 laser was achieved successfully without any intracavity limiting apertures an evident by the smooth shape of detected pulses. Furthermore, a 3x3 cm cross section single mode beam with unaffected energy of about 4 J/pulse was obtained. This specially designed array due to its observed spectral coincidence of CW radiation and pulsed emission indicates exact alignment of injected CW radiation with the optical axis of TEA CO2 laser resonator without significant angular deviation. Slight radial deviation, however, did not have any detectable destructive effect on the single mode output signals. This compact and simple structure single mode TEA CO2 laser with its stability and simple adjustability can be very useful particularly for portable units such as atmospheric lidar instruments.
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