Parameter study of RF excited diffusively cooled all-metal slab waveguide CO2 laser

In this paper, we have investigated some parameters of a radio frequency (RF) excited diffusively cooled all-metal slab waveguide CO2 laser based on the modified Rigrod theory by introducing a waveguide coupling efficiency which designates the coupling between the waveguide and the resonator mirrors. The parameters of the laser small signal gain go, saturation intensity Is, and waveguide coupling efficiency ηare studied theoretically and experimentally. In the experiments, three sets of output coupling flat mirrors with the different transitivities were used, and a maximum laser power output of 150 W was obtained from a gas discharge region of 2-mm height, 20-mm width, and 386-mm length coupled with a CASE-I optical waveguide resonator.