HIGH-POWER CO LASERS IN RUSSIA

Investigation, production and application of CO lasers in Russia is re viewed. At present, in numerous laboratories various kinds of cw, puls e and pulse-periodic CO lasers have been developed. Continuous sealed- off CO lasers with water cooling and generation power over 5-10 W, exc ited by self-sustained electric discharge, are successfully manufactur ed and used in electronics devices and in medicine. The generation pow er of the fast-flow cw cryogenic CO laser with self-sustained discharg e reaches approximately 1 kJ. The application of electro-ionisation (E I) pumping has led to the creation of pulsed EI CO lasers with approxi mately 1 kJ energy and cw and pulsed-periodic EI CO lasers with 10 kW power and efficiency of approximately 40 %. The investigations of puls ed EI CO lasers laid the foundation for the creation of CO laser ''mas ter generator - amplifier'' and systems such as pulse-periodic CO lase rs. A laser system with 200 J energy and radiation angular divergence of 2.10(-4) rad has been constructed. The requirements on the efficien t amplification in the active medium and the transportation of CO lase r multifrequency pulses with various spectral and temporal properties through the air have been set. Supersonic EI CO laser with the peak po wer of 10(5) W and a pulse-periodic EI CO 10 kW laser with the flow sp eed lower than sound speed generating approximately 100 J pulses with a repetition rate of up to 100 Hz have been made. EI CO-lasers with th e laser mixture injection in the liquid state and those with nuclear i onization are developed.