Industrial 3 kW CO2 laser emitting high-quality radiation

The results are given of the development of a laser system based on an LOK-3M cw CO₂ laser pumped by a self-sustained dc discharge in a transverse gas stream, and of a study of the characteristics of the radiation emitted. An unstable self-filtering resonator cavity is used in this system. This makes it possible to generate, with the use solely of totally reflecting mirrors, a beam with a divergence which is only 1.5 times greater than the asymptotic divergence angle of a Gaussian beam with the same waist diameter. A numerical analysis is made of the influence of the deviation of the cavity parameters from given values on the diffraction losses and beam characteristics.