Picosecond mid-infrared amplifier for high average power - art. no. 6346313

High pressure CO, lasers are good candidates for amplifying picosecond mid infrared pulses. High pressure CO2 lasers are notorious for being unreliable and difficult to operate. In this paper a high pressure CO2 laser is presented based on well developed I-C-inversion type excitation circuit. The laser contains internal room temperature catalysts allowing closed loop or rare isotope operation. The laser was designed for 300Hz operation and could achieve this for short time periods and could be operated at up to 200Hz for extended time periods. Some of the design features and experimental results are presented in this paper.