Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Yoichi Tanino

Junichi Nishimae

Tatsuya Yamamoto

Shuichi Fujikawa

A gas laser device which can perform optical amplification, laser light passing through a laser gas excited by electrical discharge, including: a first and second pair of discharge electrodes arranged longitudinally along an optical axis of the laser light; at least two mirrors reflecting the laser light amplified by the gas laser, the mirrors arranged opposite to each other to interpose a first discharge region defined by the first pair of discharge electrodes and a second discharge region defined by the second pair of discharge electrodes therebetween; and a shielding member located between the first pair of discharge electrodes and the second pair of discharge electrodes, the shielding member protruding from electrode surfaces of the discharge electrodes toward the optical axis of the laser light. The configuration can efficiently suppress parasitic oscillation with a simple structure.

Gas laser device

A COlaser device and a COlaser processing device for emitting a pulse laser having a high output and a stable beam diameter without depending on a repetition frequency. The COlaser device includes: laser gas being a COlaser medium; a near-concentric stable optical resonator in which a radius of curvature of at least one resonator mirror is set so as to be equal to a distance from an optical switch to the resonator mirror; an optical switch provided in the stable optical resonator; and transmission mirrors provided so that laser light generated from the stable optical resonator passes through the COlaser medium again.

[object Object]

A laser oscillator includes: a optical resonator having an orthogonal mirror and a partial reflection mirror; a laser gas acting as a laser medium; and a 90-degree folding mirror acting as a polarization selecting element. The orthogonal mirror has two reflecting surfaces orthogonal to each other. The 90-degree folding mirror is arranged such that the polarization direction of the laser oscillated light is parallel to the reference axis set in a plane perpendicular to an optical axis of the optical resonator. The orthogonal mirror is arranged such that the polarization direction of the laser oscillated light is parallel to the valley line of the orthogonal mirror. This configuration can compensate anisotropy of optical characteristics in a laser medium, and stably generate linearly polarized laser light having excellent isotropy in a simple manner.

Gas discharge laser oscillator and gas discharge laser amplifier providing linearly polarized light

A COgas laser device according to the present invention amplifies COlaser light that oscillates repeatedly in short pulses having a pulse width of 100 ns or less, and cools a CO2 laser gas which is excited by continuous discharge by circulating the CO2 laser gas by means of forced convection. Therein, an angle &#x3b8; defined by the optical axis of the amplified COlaser beam and the flow direction of the COlaser gas caused by the forced convection is determined by both a discharge cross sectional area and a discharge length of a volume in which the COlaser gas is excited by discharge, whereby increasing the gain of pulsed laser to achieve pulsed laser light having an extremely high average output power.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Yoichi Tanino