RF excited diffusively cooled kilowatts slab waveguide CO/sub 2/ laser with a folded optical resonator

The summary form only given. In this paper, we present an RF gas discharge excited diffusively cooled CO/sub 2/ laser with a folded optical resonator. In this laser, two slab waveguide discharge regions are constructed by two grounded copper electrodes and a live central copper electrode, which are cooled with tap water. Each discharge region has a size of 500 mmlength/spl times/98mm/spl times/width2 mm height. In the experiments, the slab waveguide regions were excited by a RF transverse gas discharge at a frequency of 93 MHz, a folded unstable optical resonator consisting of a concave mirror with a curvature radius of 6616 mm, a convex mirror with a curvature radius of 4456 mm and two 45 degree incidence flat copper mirror was employed, the output aperture size is 2 mm/spl times/ 32 mm, the four resonator mirrors form a "U" shape optical path. A gas composition of CO/sub 2/:N/sub 2/:He:Xe at a ratio of 19:19:57:5 with operation pressures at 10 KPa was employed. The whole setup of electrodes and optical resonator was enclosed in a stainless steel vacuum chamber. The vacuum chamber was sealed with copper "O" rings. By the use of the above laser head, a maximum of laser power output of over 1 Kilowatts was obtained.