Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE
Active medium of long-pulsed CO2 and CO laser as a phase conjugating mirror
L. A. Afanas’ev, А. А. Ионин, Yu. M. Klimachëv, А. А. Котков, Dmitrii V. Sinitsyn
Abstract
The results of experiments on four-wave interaction of electron-beam-controlled discharge long pulsed CO2-lasers' (t-20 microsecond(s) ) and CO- lasers' (t approximately 200 microsecond(s) ) radiation inside their active medium are presented. Linearly polarized probe CO2 (CO-) laser beam intersects strong electromagnetic waves counterpropagating through an inverted medium inside the laser resonator. The laser beam reflected from the active medium has been registered both in near-field zone and in far field one. The experiments on recovering of optical images in near-field zone and recovering of angular divergency of laser radiation in far-field zone demonstrated that reflected beam was phase-conjugated one. The reflectivity of phase-conjugated beam was up to 2% for CO2-laser and up to 0.2% for CO- laser. The time-history of phase-conjugation reflectivity and comparison with theoretical results are discussed.