Abstract
RF discharge has recently been increasingly used for the excitation of CO2 lasers. This paper gives the characteristics of RF discharge which strongly depend on the excitation frequency. The discharge and the laser excitation characteristics of 1MHz and 13MHz were measured and com-pared with each other. Good laser pulsing characteristics, which are one of the features of RF discharge, were obtained without auxiliary discharge at both frequencies. As a result, we found that from the viewpoint of discharge physics 13MHz is preferable; however from the technical viewpoint 1MHz is better because we can use an efficient solid-state generator. We also show the performance of lasers using 1MHz or 13MHz, and a future trend of industrial CO2 lasers.
