Longitudinally excited CO2 laser with multiple laser tubes

We developed a longitudinally excited CO2 laser system that was constituted of two or three laser tubes and a single driving circuit. The multiple laser tubes simultaneously produced almost the same short laser pulses with a spike pulse width of about 164 ns and a pulse tail length of about 74 μs with a single driving circuit. The double-tube system was constituted of two 30 cm-long laser tubes with inner diameters of 13 mm and 16 mm and a single driving circuit with an input energy of 2.18 J. The output energy of the 13 mm-tube was 23.3 mJ, and that of the 16 mm-tube was 21.9 mJ at a gas pressure of 4.2 kPa (CO2:N2:He = 1:1:2). The triple-tube system was constituted of three 30 cm-long laser tubes with inner diameters of 9 mm, 13 mm, and 16 mm and a single driving circuit with an input energy of 2.18 J. The output energy of the 9 mm tube was 15.9 mJ, that of the 13 mm tube was 24.1 mJ, and that of the 16 mm tube was 19.2 mJ at a gas pressure of 4.2 kPa. With the same driving circuit and the same input energy, the total output energies of the multitube laser systems were higher than the output energy of a single-tube system.