Pointing stability of copper vapor laser with novel off-axis unstable resonator

摘要

Abstract: Off-axis unstable resonators are used in copper vaporlasers to obtain low divergence beam. In the commonresonator design, the edge of a small diameter convexmirror is used as the front mirror. The beam pointingof such a laser is strongly dependent on the operationconditions of the head, and thus day to dayfluctuations are observed. In a new cavity design, theconvex mirror is coupled via the edge of a flat scrapermirror. As a result, a pointing stability as small as0.2 mrad was observed. It is shown that in lasers withshort inversion life time and high gain geometricalconsiderations may explain temporal and spatialproperties of the laser output. The spatial andtemporal properties of a 28 mm diameter CVL are alsodescribed, and the mode of operation of the laser isdiscussed. !