entladungsgepumpter gas lasers with baffle separation for controlled flow of gas to vorionisierern.

摘要

A discharge-pumped gas laser (10) has a pressure container (11) filled with a laser gas under pressure and a pair of elongate main discharge electrodes (14,15). The main discharge electrodes (14,15) are disposed in the pressure container (11) in confronting relationship to each other for producing an electric discharge in the laser gas in a main discharge region (16) defined therebetween to excite the laser gas for laser emission. The laser gas is circulated to flow through the main discharge region (16) in a direction perpendicular to the main discharge electrodes (14,15). The laser gas in the main discharge region (16) is preionized by an UV preionizer (17,18) disposed either upstream or downstream of the main discharge region (16) with respect to the direction of flow of the laser beam. The pressure container (11) houses a baffle partition (33) for controlling the laser gas to flow past one of the main discharge electrodes (14,15) and the preionizer (17) while blocking the laser gas from directly flowing to the other of the main discharge electrodes (14,15) and the preionizer (18). IMAGE