High-efficiency low-divergence pulsed chemical photoinitiated D2–F2 laser with an active medium of 6-liter volume

A study was made of the divergence of the radiation obtained from a pulsed chemical photoinitiated D₂-F₂ laser with active medium of 6-liter volume and efficient utilization of the initiation energy. Selection of an unstable telescopic resonator ensured that the divergence of the laser radiation was close to the diffraction limit and the output energy was ~50–70J. The energy losses (compared with a similar laser with a plane-plane resonator) did not exceed ~30%. The influence of initiation inhomogeneity on the divergence of the output laser radiation was considerably less when an unstable resonator was employed.