Abstract

There are several potential applications for compact sealed-off CO lasers with cw output powers of tens of watts. These include surgical systems with fiber-optic delivery, materials processing, and atmospheric pollution monitoring. For such applications, these lasers must operate efficiently without cryogenic cooling and with a long sealed-off lifetime. Direct-current-excited CO lasers operating at room temperature have recently produced output powers of 29 W m⁻¹ and exhibited efficiencies of 15%.¹

© 1988 Optical Society of America