Abstract
Unstable resonators of various configurations are widely used to extract power in the form of low-divergence beams from large-aperture high-gain laser systems,1,2 In particular, the technique has been applied to large-volume copper vapor laser (CVL) systems.2,3 However, the CVL is a pulsed system in which the period of gain lasts for only 20–50 ns within each discharge excitation pulse. Thus, for typical cavity lengths of 1–2 m, the light can make only a few round trips of the cavity during the gain period. An appreciable fraction of the total energy in each laser output pulse is made up of light which has made only one or two cavity round trips and is, therefore, coupled out before the low-divergence cavity oscillation has had time to become established. The high-beam quality, low-divergence component of the output beam is only available from the tail of each pulse and may represent <60% of the energy extractable from the same device when a plane-plane resonator is used.
© 1986 Optical Society of America
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