%0 Journal Article
%A Serna Galán, Julio
%A Encinas Sanz, Fernando
%A Martínez Herrero, María Rosario
%A Martín Mejías, Pedro
%T Time-resolved spatial profile of TEA CO_2 laser pulses: influence of the gas mixture and intracavity apertures
%D 2001
%@ 1084-7529
%U https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/58582
%X The evolution of the intensity profile of transversely excited atmospheric CO_2 laser pulses is investigated within the intensity moment formalism. The beam quality factor M_2 is used to study the mode evolution. Attention is focused on the influence of both the gas mixture (N_2:CO_2:He) and the diameter of an intracavity diaphragm placed to attenuate higher-order modes. The degree of accuracy that can be attained by approximating the laser field amplitude by means of the lower-order terms of a Hermite-Gauss expansion is also analyzed. In particular, a bound for the truncation error is given in terms of two time-resolved spatial parameters, namely the beam width and the M_2 parameter.
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