Transmission characteristics of folded waveguide structures

There is growing interest in the development of compact high-power folded CO2 waveguide lasers for medical, industrial, and military applications. To date, however, no comprehensive resonator model of such lasers has been produced with the result that laser design has been somewhat arbitrary in this respect. To overcome this and be able to undertake more rigorous laser design we are in the process of developing a folded laser resonator model. As a starting point, we have modeled the single-pass transmission characteristics of a square cross-section hollow V-fold structure, this being a fundamental building block of more complex devices.