A 10 cm APERTURE, HIGH QUALITY TEA CO 2 LASER

Experiments have been performed on a corona preionization type 10 cm aperture TEA CO2 laser. For a CO2 : N2 : He = 1 : 1 : 7 mixture an output energy of 34 joule per liter and for a 1 : 1 : 10 mixture 40 joule per liter could be obtained. The overall efficiency is about 18%. The time behaviour of the current and voltage of the system shows a delay of several hundreds of nanoseconds after the preionization peak, which indicates a relatively low initial electron-density level. Neverthe less, it proved to be high enough to obtain a very homogeneous discharge and reproducible output energy.