A new nonheated copper vapor laser

Abstract

A new method for decreasing the operating temperature of copper vapor lasers (CVL) by pulsed injection of pure metal vapor into the active volume of the laser is described. The inductively produced copper plasma is accelerated by a pulsed magnetic field. As a result the laser operates at room temperature in a double-pulse mode. The population densities of both the ground and metastable states of copper atoms were derived from optical absorption measurements. The metastable level density decays rapidly while the ground-state densities exist up to 2 msec without noticeable changes. The scaling of this type of laser was studied. A 24 mJ output laser pulse of 65 ns duration was obtained for a laser tube 90 cm long and 10 cm bore. The advantages of the new CVL are discussed.