Photoinitiated transversely sustained CO2 laser

Abstract

A uniform self-sustaining discharge is initiated in a high-pressure CO2 : N2 : He mixture by photons from a series of intense arcs, and subsequently sustained for times on the order of 400 μsec by an externally applied cathode-anode voltage. For total pressures in the range of 100 Torr, lasing action is observed to occur in single 50–400-μsec-wide pulses, depending upon the discharge parameters. Energy supplied by the sustainer is converted to laser output with an efficiency of approximately 7%.