Energy characteristics of a round-trip CO2 amplifier

An investigation was made of the energy characteristics of a round-trip CO₂ amplifier intended for operation with a wavefront-reversing mirror. A quantitative comparison is made between the results obtained and the theory of amplification based on the steady-state two-level model of an active medium with a homogeneously broadened line. It is shown that this theory is applicable to the amplification of a typical CO₂ laser pulse both when a single saturation parameter is introduced for the whole pulse and when the pulse shape is taken into account.