Abstract
The saturation characteristics were studied on the freon gases (C4F8, FC-115 and FC-12) by a TEA CO2laser. 1) The transmission as a function of incident photon flux is simulated by a computer calculation with some molecular parameters of the 4-level model by Huff and DeShazer. 2) The absorption spectra of these gases were found to extend the absorption region over that of SF6 (the 10.4μm P-branch of a CO2 laser). 3) The observed nonlinear absorption properties can be divided into two characteristic regions of the 2-level and 4-levelmodels as same as those of SF6. 4) Both the gas pressure effects and He additive were measured at the typical incident wavelength of each gas to increase the contrast ratio for the gain isolation in a high power CO2 laser system. 5) The freon gases have the saturation intensity of 1-2 order larger than SF6.
