Influence of self-interaction on the frequency instability of a CO2 laser

Experimental and numerical investigations were made of the change in the frequency during an output pulse from a CO₂ laser. It was found that the distribution of the density in the CO₂ medium differed considerably from the results of calculations based on earlier theoretical models and this was due to inhomogeneous heat evolution. A good quantitative agreement was achieved between numerical and experimental dependences of the frequency drift of the output radiation for different parameters of the active medium and of the resonator.