F A Gubarev

CuBr Laser Excited by a Capacitively Coupled Longitudinal Discharge

The paper presents the study of the CuBr laser energy characteristics using capacitively coupled discharge excitation. We have studied the effect of the addition of HBr on laser performance for gas discharge tubes of different bore diameter at various input power conditions. When adding HBr pulse and average output power as well as laser efficiency more than double increase due to the shortening of the current pulse rising time and its duration. The total maximum average lasing power of 3.7 W was obtained at 0.27% efficiency. In the paper, we also notice that when adding admixtures capacitively coupled discharge pumping is superior to traditional glow discharge pumping.

Influence of the discharge circuit inductance on output characteristics of a CuBr laser

The dependence of energy characteristics of an average-volume CuBr laser with and without addition of HBr on the rate of discharge current rise is studied. The energy characteristic is varied by connecting an additional inductance in the discharge circuit. It is shown that the average lasing power of the CuBr laser decreases tenfold with an increase in the inductance up to 4 μH. Under similar conditions, the average lasing power of the CuBr laser with addition of HBr decreases by less than two times. The fraction of lasing at the yellow line changes less. Thus, the presence of an electronegative addition to the active medium of a CuBr laser decreases requirements for the pulse power supply.

Study of scalability of capacitive excited CuBr lasers

In this work, we study experimentally the output performance of a middle-scale CuBr laser with longitudinal capacitive discharge excitation. Lasing power dependencies on different operating parameters are studied, including the equivalent electrode capacitance value. An average output power of 12 W, the maximum to date, has been attained in the CuBr laser excited by a longitudinal capacitive discharge with ∼0.5% efficiency. This result has been obtained with a total calculated electrode capacitance of 1190 pF on the each side of the gas discharge active region.