TM/sub 010/-mode microwave excited high power CO/sub 2/ laser using a cylindrical resonant cavity

Abstract

Microwave discharges for excitation of CO/sub 2/ lasers have been investigated. A resonant microwave cavity (2.45 GHz) has been employed to get high power laser operation. Laser experiments using a system composed of axial fast gas flow, axial electric field, and axial laser beam have been performed. Homogeneous discharges have been obtained by a TM/sub 010/-mode cavity with reentrant type tuners on the both end plates. Calculations of the electric field inside the cylindrical cavity filled with a dielectric tube using the program SUPERFISH were compared with the results of the measurements. The laser output of 259 W and the efficiency of 14% (rf power to laser power conversion ratio) were obtained from a newly developed two-cavity CO/sub 2/ laser module.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>