Abstract

Pumping self-terminating metal vapor lasers require, among other things, a fast rise time of the electrical power that is deposited in the lasing medium at high temperatures, e.g., above 1500°C for the copper vapor laser. The best way to obtain a fast rise time is to transversely couple a low inductance electrical pulse forming circuit with a high temperature laser cell. One of the major problems involved in designing such a system is caused by the high temperature that has to be dealt with. We describe a transverse electrical discharge system that pumps high temperature metal vapor lasers with a rise rate of current in excess of 10⁴ A/ns at a repetition rate of several kilohertz. This system was used to pump a new version of the transverse discharge copper vapor laser (TDCVL)¹ at 5 kHz in a steady state mode, generating an unoptimized average laser of 1.8 W. The laser power was a linear function of the repetition rate. It is demonstrated that self-heated TDCVLs can be developed for practical applications.

© 1989 Optical Society of America