1064nm激光诱导等离子体开关控制355nm脉宽可调输出

为得到脉宽可控的355nm紫外脉冲激光输出,采用1064nm脉冲激光诱导等离子体开关技术,控制355nm激光脉冲宽度,在激光电离Cu小孔内壁表面及空气击穿共同作用下,获得了2.8ns～10ns的脉宽可调输出.讨论了1064nm单脉冲输出能量对脉宽压缩的影响,在无延时情况下得到了脉宽最短达2.8ns的脉冲激光输出.在此基础上,保持1064nm单脉冲输出能量不变,采用延时装置改变两光路间的光程差,以控制等离子体开关相对于355nm激光脉冲的形成时间,最终得到脉宽可调的脉冲激光输出.结果表明,等离子体开关结构简单、操作方便、适用范围广,是一种较好的脉冲整形手段.     

等离子体开关在TEA CO2激光倍频中的应用

简要分析了脉冲整形对于TEA CO2激光倍频实验的重要性和必要性。目前，获得短脉冲的激光脉冲整形技术中，等离子体开关结构简单，而且脉冲整形效果好，是获得高质量短脉冲比较好的方法。设计了利用激光触发气体击穿产生等离子体的方式进行脉冲整形的等离子体开关，并利用电磁波在等离子体中的反射和传播对其工作原理进行了说明。利用自行研制的等离子体开关进行了TEA CO2激光脉冲整形实验，将主峰半高全宽(FWHM)60 ns，带有长达数百纳秒的氮气拖尾的TEA CO2激光脉冲斩去拖尾、整形，得到了FWHM 30 ns的窄脉冲。在双块AgGaSe2晶体(长分别为11．7mm和19．5mm)倍频实验光路图中加入等离子体开关所得倍频转换效率达12．9％，比起未加等离子体开关时最高转换效率2％有明显的增加。     

1064nm激光诱导等离子体开关控制355nm脉宽可调输出

为得到脉宽可控的355nm紫外脉冲激光输出,采用1064nm脉冲激光诱导等离子体开关技术,控制355nm激光脉冲宽度,在激光电离Cu小孔内壁表面及空气击穿共同作用下,获得了2.8ns～10ns的脉宽可调输出。讨论了1064nm单脉冲输出能量对脉宽压缩的影响,在无延时情况下得到了脉宽最短达2.8ns的脉冲激光输出。在此基础上,保持1064nm单脉冲输出能量不变,采用延时装置改变两光路间的光程差,以控制等离子体开关相对于355nm激光脉冲的形成时间,最终得到脉宽可调的脉冲激光输出。结果表明,等离子体开关结构简单、操作方便、适用范围广,是一种较好的脉冲整形手段。     

采用小孔等离子体开关实现TE CO2激光窄脉冲整形

典型的TE CO2激光脉冲,通常由高功率窄脉冲（100 ns）和低功率长拖尾部分（3~5 s）组成。采用一种简单的小孔等离子体开关技术可以实现对低功率长拖尾部分的有效吸收和散射,保留需要的高功率窄脉冲前沿部分,达到激光脉冲压缩和整形目的。详细研究了小孔位于不同离焦距离时整形激光脉冲波形的变化,获得了整形激光脉宽、能量与离焦距离的变化关系,实现了50~110 ns的窄脉冲CO2激光输出。进一步研究发现,小孔等离子体开关的使用寿命主要由激光脉冲能量、重复频率、整形脉冲宽度决定。通过该技术实现的窄脉冲CO2激光可以用于极紫外光刻等离子体光源、激光雷达等领域的研究。     

A broadly tunable NH3Raman FIR laser

The generation of broadly tunable FIR laser emission by pumping Raman transitions in NH3with 300 mJ, 50 ns duration pulses from a continuously tunable CO2laser is reported. FIR laser outputs up to 4 mJ and a photon conversion efficiency as high as 16 percent have been obtained.     

A high-intensity narrow bandwidth pulsed submillimeter laser for plasma diagnostics

A CH3F laser oscillator producing between 0.5 and 1 kW pulses lasting 400 ns and confined to less than 27-MHz bandwidth at 496 μm is the basis of an injection laser assembly which generates up to 250 kW of far-infrared (FIR) output within a bandwidth of 55 MHz.     

High peak power and high repetition rate characteristics in acurrent-pulsed Q-switched CO2 laser with a mechanical shutter

An electro-mechanical Q-switched (EMQ) CO₂ laser is Q-switched by a mechanical beam chopper in combination with a pulsed discharge current. Such a system can produce pulses with high peak powers (>10 kW) and high repetition rates (>1 kpps). In order to analyze the output characteristics, the peak power and the duration of the output pulses have been measured experimentally in detail over a wide range of Q-switching times up to 250 ns. For a low-pressure (<4 kPa) CO₂ gas system, the standard rate equations adequately explain the experimental results by introducing a new switching function for the form of the cavity loss for the mechanical chopper. In an EMQ-laser with a high initial inversion density (4.5·10¹⁵ /cm³ at 150 mA peak current), multiple peak pulses or pulse distortion have been observed. This is due to the plasma screening effect induced by the burning of the metal shutter blades placed inside the cavity. It is found that tungsten metal shutter blades can be used up to a power density of 259 MW/cm² for a focused beam without this effect occurring, The solutions of the rate equations show that optimum coupling can prevent the plasma screening effect even for a Q-switching time longer than the pulse buildup time. The EMQ-laser configured for optimum coupling has produced a peak output power of 30 kW for the 9P20 transition branch in the CO₂ spectrum without any pulse distortion. This value has been obtained even though the discharge length was only 1.3 meters     

High-power dye laser pulses by cascaded controlled transient oscillation

The output of a picosecond cascade-pumped controlled transient oscillation (CTO) dye laser has been amplified to the millijoule level. Single-mode operation and frequency selection with a spectral width of 0.2 nm were achieved by using an angle-tuned narrow-band interference filter. A plasma shutter was employed as a pulse clean-up device for these high-power laser pulses. This device had a transmission of 86 percent and provided background-free operation for the laser system. Sychronizable output pulses with an energy of 2 mJ and a duration of 20 ps at 10 pps were routinely produced. The gain of the amplifier chain was about7.5 times 10^{4}.     

Q-switching of the CO2laser

The laser pulses obtainable from aQ-switched CO2laser are calculated and compared with the results of a number of different techniques of performing theQ-switching. The continuously operating laser is considered first. The transition rates between the molecular vibrational states and their occupations are derived from the measured CW power. The laser tube was 1.9 meters long, had a diameter of 2.4 cm, and used flowing CO2-N2-He gas. For rapidQ-switching, maximum pulses of 4.5 mJ energy and 85 ns half width are predicted. Such pulses were observed with a rotating mirrorQ-switch. However, that technique has a limited pulse repetition rate and experiments on closely spaced pulses are difficult to interpret. A more flexible technique, which allows a much greater variation in the experimental parameters, is the use of a fast shutter to interrupt the laser beam in the cavity. While this switch is somewhat slower than the rotating mirror it does produce pulses of the same energy at repetition rates up to 5000 per second, and smaller pulses at any desired higher rate. From these measurements the upper and lower laser level lifetimes are deduced. They are found to agree well with the values obtained from the CW measurements.     

Sub-T2optical pulse generation: Application to optically pumped far-infrared lasers

Several polar molecules possessing strong far-infrared (FIR) transitions have been optically pumped by a mode-locked CO2TEA laser in a single-pass configuration. All the resulting FIR pulses are shorter than the sub-T2pump pulses; subnanosecond FIR pulses are observed. These short FIR pulses exhibit lethargic gain, stimulated Raman emission, and multiple-pulse superradiance. The experimental results are modeled by numerical solution of the Maxwell-density matrix equations for two fields interacting with a three-level system. Level degeneracy is included, and the pump is described by a multimode power spectrum with a parabolic envelope, resulting in a periodic train of pulses. Variation of the detuning of the pump from resonance allows simulation of the superradiant or Raman cases. This fully coherent model, which is the major contribution of this paper, explains key experimental observations such as the noncoincidence of the Raman peak with the pump modulation minimum and the enhancement of multiple-pulse superradiance due to remanent polarization.     

TEA CO2激光脉冲整形用等离子体开关技术的进展

TEA CO2激光脉冲整形技术是高功率、高重复率、捷变频的TEA CO2激光器研究和用TEA CO2激光产生倍频、高次谐波技术的必不可少的重要技术.等离子体开关是目前应用较广的一种简单可行的激光脉冲整形技术.综述了等离子开关技术的原理和技术的发展过程,并对其作了简要分析,展望了其广泛的应用前景.     

New CH3OH laser lines pumped with a fine-tuned high-power CO2-TEA laser

Joule-level pulses from an etalon tuned CO₂-TEA laser with an ～ 4GHz intraline tuning range have been used to pump a large number of new CH₃OH FIR laser lines. FIR wavelength measurements, pump laser offsets which produced FIR laser lines and pump laser offsets at which CH₃OH absorption lines were observed are reported. Identifications are proposed for most of the absorption lines, and an attempt to identify the FIR laser lines is described.     

Spark control cavity dumping

The intracavity laser driven plasma was used to dump the laser. The computer simulation shows the possibility of obtaining intense several nanosecond pulses. The ruby laserQ-switched by the saturable dye simultaneously dumped by an intracavity laser driven spark in the air, at atmospheric pressure, produces 100 MW, 6 ns pulses.     

355 nm脉冲激光诱导等离子体开关削波

利用激光诱导等离子体开关技术,对355 nm脉冲激光自削波进行了实验和理论研究。分别采用5种不同焦距的透镜,集中讨论了透镜焦距及激光器输出单脉冲能量对脉宽压缩的影响,发现采用焦距为200 mm的透镜能够获得最佳的脉冲压缩效果。在聚焦透镜焦距200 mm,单脉冲能量160 mJ时,获得最短脉宽3.47 ns;在激光电离Cu小孔内壁表面及空气击穿共同作用下,获得了脉宽最短达2.11 ns的脉冲激光输出。此外,根据实验结果得到了355 nm激光空气击穿阈值,并与理论估算值进行比较,两者结果较为一致。     

Very short far-infrared pulses from optically pumped CH3OH/D, CH3F, and HCOOH lasers using an EQ-switched CO2laser as a pump source

Very short far-infrared (FIR) pulses were generated from optically pumped CH3F, CH3OH/D, and HCOOH lasers using aQ- switched, current pulsed (200 mA, 100 μs), low pressure (20 torr) CO2laser as a pump source. Values of 20 ns for the rise time and 50 ns for the decay time of the FIR pulses have been observed. The dependence of the FIR pulse shape parameters, i.e., rise time, decay time, and pulse buildup time, on the width of the pump pulse and the pressure of the molecular gas have been investigated experimentally. Due to the regular pulse shape, high repetition rate (350 Hz), high peak power (≳1 W), and broad spectral range (lambda = 100-500 mum), the pulses are very useful for purposes of solid-state and molecular time resolved spectroscopy.     

Laser-induced plasma formation in water at nanosecond tofemtosecond time scales: calculation of thresholds, absorptioncoefficients, and energy density

The generation of plasmas in water by high-power laser pulses was investigated for pulse durations between 100 ns and 100 fs on the basis of a rate equation for the free electron density. The rate equation was numerically solved to calculate the evolution of the electron density during the laser pulse and to determine the absorption coefficient and energy density of the plasma. For nanosecond laser pulses, the generation of free electrons in distilled water is initiated by multiphoton ionization but then dominated by cascade ionization. For shorter laser pulses, multiphoton ionization gains ever more importance, and collision and recombination losses during breakdown diminish. The corresponding changes in the evolution of the free carrier density explain the reduction of the energy threshold for breakdown and of the plasma energy density observed with decreasing laser pulse duration. By solving the rate equation, we could also explain the complex pulse duration dependence of plasma transmission found in previous experiments. Good quantitative agreement was found between calculated and measured values for the breakdown threshold, plasma absorption coefficient, and plasma energy density     

Narrow bandwidth emission from a mirrorless, far infrared, 13CH3F laser

Frequency tuning and linewidth measurements are reported for a pulsed, mirrorless, kilowatt-power-level, far-infrared (FIR) ¹³ CH₃F laser operating at 245 GHz. The pump laser is an etalon tunable, single-mode CO₂ TEA laser. The FIR frequency spectrum was measured with 2.5-MHz resolution on individual 100-ns laser output pulses using harmonic mixing techniques. The linewidth of the amplified spontaneous emission was found to be surprisingly narrow, about 15 MHz. Frequency tuning of the FIR laser, as the pump laser frequency is tuned, is nonlinear, possibly due to inhomogeneous broadening of the gain by the K-level substructure of the rotational states. These results indicate that heterodyne receivers capable of single-shot frequency measurements can be important tools for investigating the properties of Raman FIR lasers     

Third order autocorrelation study of amplified subpicosecond laser pulses

We have used the well-known optical Kerr effect shutter method to determine the temporal width and shape of subpicosecond pulses issued from a passively mode-locked CW dye laser, feeding a three stage amplifier. This technique corresponds to a third order correlation measurement and thus yields information on the pulse profile and especially about a possible asymmetry. The accuracy of results greatly benefits from the large dynamic range that reaches 10³.     

脉冲激光器种子注入状态检测装置与实验研究

为了解决非注入状态激光脉冲对非相干多普勒激光雷达测风结果可靠性的影响,利用注入与非注入状态激光脉冲建立时间不同的原理,设计和实现了一种脉冲激光种子注入状态检测器,其时间测量精度为45ps,测量时间范围为3.5ns~2500ns,最高脉冲重复频率为1kHz。利用该检测器对某型号Nd:YAG脉冲激光器进行了种子注入状态检测实验,结果显示注入(非注入)状态脉冲建立平均时间为123.27ns(134.44ns),1.35h内非注入状态激光脉冲占总激光脉冲比例为8.54%。结果表明,该脉冲激光种子注入状态检测器能够有效地检测出非注入状态的激光脉冲,对于提高激光雷达测风可靠性具有潜在的价值。     

2 ns pulse width high repetition rate short cavity acousto-optically Q-switched Nd:YVO/sub 4/ laser

With a specially constructed miniature acousto-optical Q-switch, 2 ns pulses with 10.3 muJ energy and 5.13 kW peak power at 80 kHz repetition rate were obtained in an end pumped short cavity acousto-optically Q-switched Nd:YVO₄ laser. This is believed to be the shortest pulse width obtained in a solid-state laser by acousto-optical Q-switching. At 500 kHz repetition rate, 10 ns pulses were generated