Gaseous saturable absorbers for the helios CO<inf>2</inf>laser system

Abstract

Saturable absorbers are widely used to suppress parasitic oscillations in large-aperture, high-power CO <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> fusion-laser systems. We report experimental results on SF <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">6</inf> -based gaseous saturable absorbers used for parasitic suppression in the eight-beam, 10 kJ Helios fusion-laser system. The gas mix effectively quenches self-lasing in the 9 and 10 μm branches of the CO <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> laser spectrum while simultaneously allowing high transmission of subnanosecond multiwavelength pulses for target-irradiation experiments. The gas isolator now in use consists of SF <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">6</inf> and the additional fluorocarbons: 1, 1-difluoroethane (FC-152a); dichlorodifluoromethane (FC-12); chloropentafluoroethane (FC-115); 1,1-dichloro 2, 2-difluoroethylene (FC-1112a); chlorotrifluoroethylene (FC- 1113); and perfluorocyclobutane (FC-C318). The saturation of the mix was studied as a function of incident fluence, pressure, cell length, and incident wavelength. Experimental results are presented on the saturation properties of pure SF <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">6</inf> and FC-152a and compared with the saturation behavior of CO <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> at 400°C.