Oxygen–iodine chemical laser with a longitudinally circulating active medium

A theoretical analysis is made of a longitudinal variant of an oxygen–iodine chemical laser that can minimize the losses of singlet oxygen when this is transferred from the reactor to the resonator. It is shown that there is a maximum gain per pass that depends on the circulation velocity. After parametrizing the problem, the laser is described using several dimensionless parameters. It is found that the oxygen pressure does not explicitly influence the gain or the lasing efficiency. In the case of a single-module system with real parameters the useful resonator losses can be of the order of 10% and the resonator efficiency need not be lower than 50%.