Abstract

Many copper vapor laser (CVL) applications of current interest (such as nonlinear frequency conversion and micro-machining) require very high beam quality and high average power, and hence necessitate the use of unstable oscillator or oscillator-amplifier systems. Improvements in the yield of high beam quality power from these devices can be achieved through more careful matching of the resonator to the spatial and temporal gain characteristics of the CVL device. We now report measurements of the spatio-temporal gain behavior in CVL amplifier and oscillator devices using novel short-pulse probe techniques.

© 1993 Optical Society of America