Abstract

Closed-cycle electric-discharge cw carbon monoxide laser systems have been studied to calculate the system efficiency (laser output power divided by electric power input) including refrigerator power, blower power, electric-discharge power, and others-The effect on the system efficiencies of varying the gas temperature supplied to the laser oscillation channel was investigated. Our calculated results in Fig-1 show that the optimum system efficiency of the CO laser system could be ~20% at a gas temperature of 185 K, which would be higher than that of a CO₂ laser system. It was also clear that overcooling the laser gas required larger refrigerator power, which led to a decrease in system efficiency and an increase of CO laser operation cost.

© 1985 Optical Society of America