California Institute of Technology

Yongfang Zhang

William B Bridges

An all metal, microwave-pumped, waveguide CO.sub.2 laser includes a waveguide providing a vacuum envelope containing the CO.sub.2 gas having a longitudinal ridge extending at least partially across the width of the waveguide and extending along a length of the waveguide and a ceiling facing the ridge. The ridge and ceiling have horizontal surfaces facing one another which together function as an optical waveguide of the laser and define a longitudinal optically active region therebetween which, in the preferred embodiment, opens out into remaining portions of the waveguide along either side of said ridge. A pair of reflecting mirrors are located at each end of said optically active region and an antenna or ramped waveguide couples a microwave source into the waveguide.

Microwave-excited slab waveguide laser with all metal sealed cavity

An in-phase coupled strip linear CO.sub.2 waveguide laser includes an upper aluminum plate and an aluminum waveguide bed including parallel ridges, each in the range of about 2 to about 5 mm wide, at a gap of about 0.5 to 2 mm from the upper plate. The slots are about 2 mm deep to prevent discharge therein and about 1 mm wide. The width of the slots is selected to permit coupling between the discharge channels formed between each ridge and the upper plate while separating the discharge beams in each channel. Discharge in each channel is in-phase coupled in the fundamental mode to produce a single lobe far field with a simple Fabry-Perot resonator.

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Pasadena, CA, United States of America

Yongfang Zhang