Talk:Carbon-dioxide laser

There's a lot of really good technical material here but it's hard for the non-specialist to understand. (I don't even know if it means ''anything' let alone if it's correct). RJFJR 02:22, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

i.r. doesn't look like the correct abbreviation for Infra-red to me. RJFJR 02:22, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've done a lot of clean-up of the article and removed the clean-up tag. Those things that I can personally verify are now correct, but the article as a whole could still use a going-over by a true subject-matter expert. I've re-marked it as a stub; perhaps that will encourage someone who really knows to chime in here.

Atlant 16:38, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

So far everything looks good to me. I'll see if I can't add anything more useful. I'm not a CO2 Laser Expert but I do know something about this laser.--Ldussan 01:38, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

WORKING OF CO2 LASER
WHY BLASTING RESISTOR IS NOT USED IN CO2 LASERVipan hira 14:43, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I think you mean a ballast resistor. I don't know. Are you sure they are not used? CW CO2 lasers that don't use RF excitation certainly need constant-current high voltage. A ballast resistor seems like a good way to achieve that. In fact, I'm pretty sure the CO2 lasers I worked with as a grad student had large ballast resistors in the power supplies. I remember replacing one of them once.


 * By the way, do not type in all capital letters. People will treat you as if you were SHOUTING AT THEM. It is not polite.--Srleffler 18:37, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Max power?
The current revision of Carbon dioxide laser says "The CO2 laser can be constructed to have powers between milliwatts (mW) and gigawatts (GW)."; this contradicts the current revision of Laser, which says "Carbon dioxide lasers emit up to 100 kW". Neither article gives references, so can we please have some? -- Whitepaw 19:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I clarified this with the best references I could find on short notice. Bottom line is both are right depending on whether you are talking about CW or Q-switched. --Chuck Sirloin 20:23, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Cheers, nice references -- Whitepaw 06:47, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry folks, the article still reads "continuous wave" and CO2 lasers are NOT the most powerful continuous wave lasers available. That honor belongs to chemical lasers, which achieve output powers at least an order of magnitude higher than CO2 devices. Free electron lasers are capable of powers even greater than that, but cannot be considered "continuous wave" devices. I know this to be true, as lasers are one of my hobbies, but I'll try to find formal citations later today. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.81.101.245 (talk) 15:57, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Why 10.6 μm and not 4.26 μm or 14.99 μm?
According to Carbon_dioxide_in_the_Earth%27s_atmosphere the principal absorption modes of CO2 occur at wavelengths of 4.26 μm and 14.99 μm. Why do CO2 lasers emit at 10.6 μm instead of these more natural wavelengths for CO2? There are lines at 10.6 in the absorption spectra I've seen for CO2 but they appear to be much weaker than the two principal ones. Some discussion of this discrepancy in the article might be helpful for readers wondering how the behavior of CO2 in lasers relates to its behavior in the atmosphere. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 03:13, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
 * You don't make a laser using a transition that has high absorption. That's not efficient, because the medium absorbs some of your beam. Usually lasers are based on transitions between two excited states, with the lower state chosen to be one that has little population at room temperature (or the operating temperature of the laser). The lower state also needs to have a fast decay to the ground state, so it stays empty. Since the lower state has essentially no electrons, light can be emitted but not absorbed. See Active laser medium for more.--Srleffler (talk) 04:01, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

PMMA is a common name in the context of microfabrication
I appreciate the good soul's work who changed PMMA into "acrylic", but first of all, PMMA is not the exact same thing as acrylic. And just as importantly, PMMA is always used in micromachining, acrylic, well, I haven't seen it yet. However, if the person who changed PMMA to acrylic feels very strongly about this, I'll let it be. But the articles about CO2 ablation of PMMA don't mention acrylic. In the context of microfluidics and MEMS, the name "acrilic" is not used, though you will see, of course, (meth)acrylic acid etc.Blind cyclist (talk) 21:26, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps one of the other names for it will do then? This isn't an article on microfabrication, so the usage in that field doesn't necessarily govern, and Wikipedia's Manual of Style requires acronyms to be spelled out the first time they are used in an article. I figured that using a more common name for the material would be better than spelling out the acronym of a chemical name.--Srleffler (talk) 00:46, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. Thank you!Blind cyclist (talk) 13:54, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

CO2 lasers in EUVL
http://www.gigaphoton.com/e/pdf/6151-126.pdf EUV lithography's source needs is a major factor pushing the development of high rep rate, pulsed CO2 lasers. Maybe this should be included in the applications section — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.43.98.75 (talk) 17:35, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * That's a good suggestion. Why don't you add something about it to the article? --Srleffler (talk) 00:42, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

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Two suggestions
I've two suggestions. One is to note that "natural" lasing in Mar's atmosphere was observed in the early 1980s (and published). Seems sunlight pumps CO2 in the mesosphere and a 10% gain was noted via telescope. It has been suggested that on Mars, you could use a simple OPEN cavity - basically just two mirrors - which suggests that the section here on the need for "special construction" may be true locally, but not universally. Two is a request that this article should get technical. I don't mean concentrate on the technical stuff, but I'd sure like to have the (energy level) transitions that are used defined and described.40.142.185.108 (talk) 14:28, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

10.6 μm and 9.3 μm
The most common quoted wavelength for CO2 lasers is 10.6 μm, presumably providing the highest output or efficiency.

The most common special wavelength in the trade is 9.3 μm, facilitating marking on certain 10.6 μm transmissive plastics.

Yet reading the neat isotope vs. wavelength table it would have us believe that the garden variety 12C18O2 lases in the range 9.0–9.2 μm.

It seems absurd that a special 14C isotope technique would be used in the VAST majority of all CO2 lasers to reach closer to 10.6 μm not withstanding the fact that the longest listed wavelength is 10.2 μm.

There is surely something obvious that I have not figured out but it is not clear from the page what isotope mix would generally be used to reach the most common wavelength of 10.6 μm in industry.

Could there be an error in the table?

Idyllic press (talk) 18:54, 17 January 2021 (UTC)


 * CO2 lases on a lot of different lines, even with a single isotope. The table in the article is only showing the range for one of several distinct emission bands. Somebody misread the original paper.--Srleffler (talk) 00:02, 18 January 2021 (UTC)