Gigahertz-mode beating in photolytic iodine lasers

Summary form only given. Iodine lasers have found interest because of the extremely high power that can be obtained and because of their potential operation as chemical lasers. Modulating the output of such high-power lasers with GHz frequencies is difficult because of the damage requirements for the corresponding optical components. In this paper a typical single-mode output pulse of a photolytic iodine laser pumped by 20 ns excimer pulses at 248 nm is shown. By applying a magnetic field the gain cross section of the 3-4 and 2-2 transition can be equalized resulting in simultaneous lasing of the two hyperfine lines and mode beating. The spectrum of the second harmonic of the laser output was monitored with a Fabry-Perot spectrometer.