Abstract:
An optical cavity with a highly reflecting mirror in the form of a hollow corner-cube reflector (CCR) made of uncooled plane metal mirrors, which, in combination with a plane semitransparent output mirror, ensures complete filling of the output laser beam aperture, is studied. It is shown that, both in the pulsed and repetitively pulsed regimes of high-power far- and mid-IR lasers, it is possible to achieve beam divergence close to the diffraction limit (taking into account the drift of the radiation pattern axis) and dependent only on the quality of surfaces and accuracy of alignment of the hollow CCR mirrors and the resonator.