ElectricOIL performance enhancement via increases in g0L

Continuing experiments with Electric Oxygen-Iodine Laser (ElectricOIL) technology have significantly increased laser power output by increasing the product of gain and gain-length, g 0 L. The authors report on progress with recent ElectricOIL devices utilizing a new concentric discharge geometry with improved O 2 (a 1 u) production at higher discharge operating pressure at higher system flow rates. O 2 (a 1 u) produced in flowing radio-frequency discharge in O2- He-NO gas mixture is used to pump I(2P1/2) by near-resonant energy transfer, and laser power is extracted on the I( 2 P 1/2 ) → I( 2 P 3/2 ) transition at 1315 nm. Modeling of recent data is presented. By increasing the gain length (system size) by a factor of 3, a 5-fold increase in laser output on the 1315-nm transition of atomic iodine was achieved. Flow conditions with g 0 L = 0.042 were used to extract a continuous wave (CW) average total laser power of 481 W. A low frequency ±11.9% oscillation in the total power was observed giving a peak outcoupled power of 538 W.