Carbon dioxide gasdynamic laser with optical feedback utilizing cascade transitions

It is shown that the specific energy characteristics of the pulse-periodic emission from a cascade CO₂ gasdynamic laser, utilizing the coupled 00⁰1–02⁰0–01¹0 transitions, can be improved by optical feedback with utilizing 10.4 μ cw radiation generated by the same laser. It is shown that such feedback enables the specific output energy of the long-wavelength (λ = 16.2 μ) cascade transition to be more than doubled.