Abstract

Following investigations into the influence of halogens and halogen donor buffer gas additives in high temperature or “elemental” copper vapour lasers [1], a new sub-class of laser has recently been developed in our laboratory based on H₂-HCl-Ne buffer gas mixtures. This device, known as a kinetically enhanced copper vapour laser (KE-CVL), typically produces laser output powers 2-3 times higher than from a similar sized elemental copper laser employing a standard H₂-Ne buffer gas mix, and at significantly higher wallplug efficiencies [2]. Furthermore, the spatio-temporal evolution of the optical gain and intracavity laser field intensities on both transitions (510.6nm and 578.2nm) is substantially different in the KE-CVL resulting in more uniform radial beam profiles, reduced beam divergence and improved overall beam quality.

© 1998 IEEE