Experimental study of multipass copper vapour laser amplifiers

Repetitively pulsed multipass copper vapour amplifiers are studied experimentally. A considerable increase in the peak power of laser pulses was achieved by using a special scheme of the amplifier. It is found that the main reasons preventing an increase in the peak power during many passages of the beam are the competitive development of lasing from spontaneous seeds in a parasitic resonator formed by the fold mirrors of a multipass amplifier, a decrease in the amplification during the last passages, and an increase in the pulse width at the amplifier output.