Diagnostics of waveguide CO2 laser active medium by means of laser spectrograph method

Studying the optimum performance of molecular lasers requires information.on active medium parameters. Those in case of laser are translational and vibrational temperatures T, T1 , T2, T3' , and lasing molecule concentration., n. Vibrational temperatures have previously been determined in series investigations of electro discharge CO—laser active medium234S. But definition of concentration n potentially associated with large errors due to lack of lower laser level's vibrational temperature T1 measurements. Other temperatures have been estimated according to approximate model. As it was theoretically shown6 , to determine the inverse medium parameters without simplification, one should measure the small signal gains for lines of (0001_1000) and (0001_0200) traditional CO2 bands, (0002_1001) second sequence band and (O1'l-ll'O) hot band. Translational and vibrational temperatures and lasing molecule concentration were defined for CO—laser using the small signal gain measurements and theoretical scheme6.