抄録
A high pressure CO2 laser was developed using an electron beam controlled discharge. Successful performance at laser gas pressures up to 15 atmospheres was achieved. The pumping input energy could be controlled up to 300J/l•atm by adjusting a gun voltage for a constant E/P of the main discharge, where E is the applied electric field strength and P the laser gas pressure. The collisional broadening coefficient of a rotational laser line was measured to be 4.6 GHz/atm.
The characteristics of passive mode-locking was investigated. The individual pulse width of a mode-locked pulse train decreased towards the latter part of the train. The physical and technical problems for stable and reproducible generation of ultra-short pulses are discussed. Using a hot-hole photoconductive detector, the measured shortest pulse width was 670ps which was limited by the time response of the measuring system.
