Radio frequency excited waveguide CO2 lasers on sequence-band transitions

2 lasers based on either a quartz or an alumina waveguide were studied on the 00°2 - 10°1,02°1]_I,II sequence bands. A compact multisegment RF excitation with capacitive coupling was used for pumping the gain section of the laser waveguide. The use of a separate intracavity hot CO₂ waveguide suppresses the regular-band transitions. The quartz waveguide laser has a total of 62 lines lasing on both the 9.4 and 10.4 μm sequence bands. The alumina waveguide laser has 40 lines lasing on the 10.4 μm sequence band. These lasers can be either pulsed or continuous-wave (CW) operated on the selected line without a line jumping problem. Received: 29 September 1997/Revised version: 2 December 1997