A compact, sealed, single mode TEA-CO/sub 2/ laser

Technical Report · Thu Jun 01 04:00:00 EDT 1978

OSTI ID:6554491

Pace, P; Lacombe, M

A compact, sealed, TEA-CO/sub 2/ laser utilizing a double-discharge technique has been constructed and operated under single-mode conditions. Sealed operational lifetimes exceeding 1,000,000 pulses have been obtained by the addition of small quantities of hydrogen and CO to the initial gas mixtures. It has also been found that operation without helium is possible giving single-mode output energies of about 35 mJ/pulse at peak powers of about 150 kW. The pulse repetition frequency was 0.5/s. To obtain single-longitudinal-mode operation, the laser cavity was kept at on overall length of 18 cm. This short laser cavity allowed the oscillation of only one longitudinal mode when the frequency of the cavity was tuned closely to the CO2 line center frequency. An iris was used to restrict transverse modes to the TEM. Beat frequency measurements using a stable, cw CO/sub 2/ laser indicate a chirp of about 5 to 6 MHz/microsec in the tail of the pulse.

• Research Organization: Defence Research Establishment Valcartier, Courcelette, Quebec (Canada)
• OSTI ID: 6554491
• Report Number(s): AD-A-056661; DREV-R-4112/78
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

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420300* -- Engineering-- Lasers-- (-1989)
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