Increase of efficiency of optical pumping of a broadband CO2 laser amplifier as a result of the use of a multicomponent active medium

The problem of the increase of the energy conversion efficiency of a broadband CO2 laser amplifier with optical pumping by the multi-frequency HF-laser radiation is considered. To improve the utilization of the pumping radiation and to broaden the amplifier bandwidth the use of a buffered with Xe mixture of the isotopomers of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide as active medium is proposed. Experimentally and by calculation the coefficients of an unsaturated absorption of 14 N 16 O, 12 C 16 O 2 and 13 C 16 O 2 were determined on 19 lines of the pulsed chemical HF-laser which concentrate up to 60% of its total output energy. The estimations show that the application of a three-component mixture of these molecular gases enables to increase up to 30% the coefficient of the utilization of the pumping radiation at aperture about 10 cm.