Compact waveguide CO2 laser excited by a RF power supply

The design and performance of radio frequency (RF) excited partial Z-fold waveguide COlaser with two channels are exposed. The length of the partial Z-fold channel is 3×460 mm and that of the single channel is 460 mm. The electrodes for the two channels are common and excited by a same RF source. According to our analysis, this kind of structure can greatly improve the laser offset frequency stability. In the experiments, we studied the variation of laser output power with gas pressure for two different channels. The maximum laser output power is about 23 W for the partial Z-fold channel and about 6 W for the single channel.