Increased efficiency of high-beam quality extraction from a copper vapor laser with H/sub 2/-Ne admixtures

We report results of a detailed study investigating the effects of hydrogen additive on the generation of high-beam quality output from a copper vapor laser. Increases up to 390% were observed for the power extracted in the high-beam quality component of laser output, however, the power of the low beam quality output remained relatively unchanged. We attribute these results to modification of the spatio-temporal characteristics of the laser gain with added H/sub 2/.