A cryogenic slab CO laser

A compact capacitive transverse RF-discharge-pumped slab CO laser with cryogenically cooled electrodes, which operates both in the cw and repetitively pulsed regimes, is fabricated. The laser operation is studied in the free running multifrequency regime at the vibrational – rotational transitions of the fundamental (V + 1 → V) vibrational bands of the CO molecule in the spectral region from 5.1 to 5.4 μm. Optimal operation conditions (gas mixture composition and pressure, RF pump parameters) are determined. It is shown that only gas mixtures with a high content of oxygen (up to 20% with respect to the concentration of CO molecules) can be used as an active medium of this laser. It is demonstrated that repetitively pulsed pumping is more efficient compared to cw pumping. In this case, quasi-cw lasing regime can be obtained. The maximum average output power of ~12 W was obtained for this laser operating on fundamental bands and its efficiency achieved ~14 %. The frequency-selective operation regime of the slab RF-discharge-pumped CO laser was realised at ~100 laser lines in the spectral region from 5.0 to 6.5 μm with the average output power of up to several tens of milliwatts in each line. Lasing at the transitions of the first vibrational overtone (V + 2 → V) of the CO molecule is obtained in the spectral region from 2.5 to 3.9 μm. The average output power of the overtone laser achieved 0.3 W. All the results were obtained without the forced gas mixture exchange in the discharge chamber. Under fixed experimental conditions, repetitively pulsed lasing (with fluctuations of the output characteristics no more than ±10 %) was stable for more than an hour.