Fermi and intramode relaxation phenomena in CO2lasers

Using a 1 ns pulse from a short-pulse CO
2
laser system, the evolution of the gain in a TEA system was studied during and after amplification. This resulted in a very direct observation of a few relaxation processes. We estimated the effective intramode relaxation rate constant to be larger than
6 \times 10^{6}
torr
^-1
/s. The Fermi relaxation time constant was found to be 30 ± 7 ns at 760 torr. We conclude that for nanosecond pulse amplification, intramode relaxation cannot be neglected.