Abstract
Optically pumped rare gas lasers are being investigated as potential high-energy, high beam quality systems. The lasing medium consists of rare gas atoms (, Ar, Kr, or Xe) that have been electric discharge excited to the metastable state. Following optical excitation, helium (He) at pressures of 200–1000 Torr is used as the energy transfer agent to create a population inversion. The primary technical difficulty for this scheme is the discharge production of sufficient metastables in the presence of of He. In this Letter, we describe a pulsed discharge that yields in the presence of He at total pressures up to 750 Torr. Using this discharge, a diode-pumped laser providing 4.1 W has been demonstrated.
© 2017 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Jiande Han, Leonid Glebov, George Venus, and Michael C. Heaven
Opt. Lett. 38(24) 5458-5461 (2013)
Rui Wang, Qingshan Liu, Zining Yang, Hongyan Wang, and Xiaojun Xu
Opt. Lett. 47(21) 5477-5480 (2022)
Pengfei Sun, Duluo Zuo, Pavel A. Mikheyev, Jiande Han, and Michael C. Heaven
Opt. Express 27(16) 22289-22301 (2019)