A study of selective absorbers for single-mode operation of CO2TEA lasers

An investigation of the generality of intracavity selective absorbers for single-longitudinal mode operation of a high power CO
2
TEA laser has been conducted. SLM operation on 36 different CO
2
lines was obtained with 14 different selective absorbers. Typical off line-center tuning ranges are also reported. Maximum off line-center offset, limited by the detection equipment, was 300 MHz. These results demonstrate the method to be a general as well as a simple technique for applications requiring a SLM laser, and suggest that the method will have important device applications.