The peak power that can be produced by 01-switching a law pressure continuously excited CO, laser is limited to about 100 watts per centimeter length of discharge because of the slow, inefficient pumping of the molecular vibrational levels by the relatively high velocity discharge electrons. Much higher powers can be produced by gain switching the CO laser. This is obtained by pulsing the electrical discharge at pressures considerably higher than the 20 torr pressure typical of the conventional dc-excited CO, laser. The resulting relatively slow plectrons produce more efficient pumping of the (001), (002) and (003) upper lasing vibrational levels of the carbon dioxide molecule and there is no bottleneck in depopulating the lower (100) laser level as is the case with conventional lasers because the low duty cycle permits the gas to return to the ground state between excitation pulses.

Date Published: 1 March 1974
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 0041, Developments in Laser Technology II, (1 March 1974); doi: 10.1117/12.953833

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0041:
Developments in Laser Technology II
Ralph F. Wuerker, Editor(s)