Abstract

The planar CO₂ lasers with one-dimension hybrid unstable resonator, in which radiation propagates by both the waveguide and free-space way, are widely used for effective extraction of the storaged energy from a large area active medium [1,2]. The using of such a resonator provides the lowest transverse mode of the laser radiation with divergence close to diffraction-limited. Both the experimental study arid numerical modelling of various schemes of hybrid waveguide unstable resonators are important for the optimisation of the output power and spatial distribution of a laser beam.

© 1998 IEEE