Enhancement of electric oxygen-iodine laser performance using larger mode volume resonators.

Herein the authors report on the demonstration of an 87% enhancement in cw laser power on the 1315 nm transition of atomic iodine via a 100% increase in the resonator mode volume. O(2)(a1Delta) is produced by a single rf-excited electric discharge sustained in an O(2)-He-NO gas mixture flowing through a rectangular geometry, and I(P2(1/2)) is then pumped using energy transferred from O(2)(a1Delta). A total laser output power of 102.5 W was obtained using a Z-pass resonator configuration.

Effects of including a diffraction term into Rigrod theory for a continuous-wave laser.

Multimode, low-gain continuous-wave lasers are often subject to having intracavity apertures that create diffractive losses inside the optical resonator. For very low-gain systems with short gain lengths, highly reflective mirrors are required to obtain laser oscillation. The Rigrod theory was modified to include a diffractive loss term and comparisons with experimental data show that the intracavity diffractive losses, while small in magnitude, can play a significant role for these low-gain cases with high mirror reflectivities.