Study of Cold-Cathode and RF-Excitation for Low Power CO2 Waveguide Lasers

摘要

Initial results indicate that transversely RF excited 2W CW CO2 waveguide lasers can be built to last in excess of 10000 hours. This result has been achieved with either internal electrodes or capacitive wall coupling and with either CO-or N2-bearing gas mixtures. On-off switching seems to be quite well tolerated. RF conductance and starting voltage measurements for six different gas mixtures and four pressure parameters are given.