A novel method is provided in conventional TE CO2 laser configuration by utilizing a specially designed small capacitance in the UV preionization scheme and a carefully optimized pulser/sustainer discharge circuitry so that the initial spike energy in the laser pulse profile induced by gain-switch effect can be greatly reduced. An experimental illustration is given in which the initial spike energy in the laser pulse is suppressed to less than 3.5% of the total pulse energy while stable laser performance is maintained.
Momentum coupling coefficients of TEA CO2 laser pulses for a parabolic aluminum shell were investigated. Momentum
coupling coefficients were measured with a pendulum in a chamber, the energy of the incident laser pulse was varied
from 8.3J to 50.9J, and the gas pressure in the chamber was changed from 100 kPa to 20 kPa in our experiments.
Experimental data were analyzed thoroughly. It was found that the coupling coefficients under the air pressure of 100kPa
decreased very slowly from 242 N/MW to 170 N/MW for the incident energy from 50.9J to 15.1J but decreased sharply
for the energy between 15.1 J to 13.8 J. And it was different for the air pressure below 100 kPa. Indoor free flight of our
parabolic shell was also analyzed, coupling coefficients and some other parameters were deduced from the experimental
data.
KEYWORDS: Electrodes, Carbon dioxide lasers, Gas lasers, Switches, Power supplies, Capacitors, Pulsed laser operation, High power lasers, Fluctuations and noise, Mirrors
A high average power TEA CO2 laser employing rotating spark gap switch is described. Average power up to 12kW has
been achieved at the repetition rate of 400Hz.
A grating tuning compound unstable resonator is presented. This new type of unstable resonator is profitable for TEA CO2 laser to generate single mode, high energy, high average power tunable laser radiation.
A new type of high repetition rate TEA CO2 laser with rotating spark gap as a discharge switch has been developed. The laser has potential ability of scaling up to very high energy and average power. In this paper, we report the recent progress in basic research.
High power high repetition rate TEA CO2 laser has potential importance in material processing such as shock hardening, glazing, drilling, welding, and cutting for high damage threshold materials, as well as in chemical reaction and isotope separation. This paper describes a transverse-flow closed-cycle UV-preionized TEA CO2 laser with peak pulse power of 20 MW, maximum average power of 1.5 KW at repetition rate of 300 HZ. The laser has compact constructure of gas flow circulation system using tangential fans. With addition of small amounts of H2 and CO to the normal CO2-N2-He gas mixture, one filling sealed operating lifetime is up to millions of pulses. A novel spark gap switch has been developed for very high repetition rate laser discharge in the condition of high pulse power.
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