R&D of carbon monoxide lasers at the Lebedev physical institute of the Russian academy of sciences (review)

The research studies of e-beam sustained discharge gas lasers initiated by Nikolai Basov in early 1970s made it possible to develop lasers based on the fundamental transitions of carbon monoxide molecule with high laser power and efficiency. Soon, under his scientific supervision, lasing on first-overtone transitions of CO molecule was obtained. Following these results, about ten years ago a compact slab CO laser excited by a repetitively pulsed capacitive RF discharge and cryogenic cooling of its electrodes, operating without forced pumping of its active medium was for the first time developed at the N.G. Basov Quantum Radiophysics Division of the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute. At present, the average power of such lasers with active medium volume of ~ 35 cm 3 reaches 40 W on CO molecule fundamental transitions (in the wavelength range of 5.06–5.92 μm) and 6 W on first-overtone transitions (λ = 2.60–3.05 μm). Under Q-switching, those repetitively pulsed lasers allow one to obtain laser emission with a peak power up to 5 kW which made it possible to apply them in experiments on laser radiation frequency conversion in nonlinear crystals into the spectral range of ~ 2–20 μm.