Overview

The commercially important gas lasers described in Chaps. 7 to 15 are only a few of the gas lasers that have been demonstrated in the laboratory. Most of the gas lasers listed in extensive tabulations based on research literature (e.g., Beck et al., 1980; Weber, 1982) are of purely academic interest. However, a few fall into an intermediate category, lasers which are available commercially, but only on a small scale, often with little marketing support.

This chapter covers five lasers that fall into that category:

• Carbon monoxide lasers at 5 to 6.5 micrometers ( ?m)

• Nitrous oxide (N ₂O) lasers at 10 to 11 ?m

• Xenon helium lasers at 2 to 4 ?m

• Xenon lasers near 0.5 ?m

• lodine lasers at 1.3 ?m

Not covered are a number of types that are minor members of families described in other chapters. Examples include the helium-selenium laser, a member of the metal vapor ion laser family described in Chap. 9, and the molecular fluorine lasers which are described with raregas-halide excimers in Chap. 13. Also not covered are isotopic variations, in which rare isotopes are substituted for common ones in order to obtain different wavelengths from gas molecules, particularly carbon dioxide.

Carbon Monoxide Lasers

Similar in many ways to the CO ₂ laser, the CO laser was discovered in 1964 at Bell Labs by C.Kumar N.Patel (Patel and Kerl, 1964), who earlier had demonstrated the first CO ₂