Ultimate energy characteristics of a mechanically Q-switched CO$_2$ LASER

It has been experimentally shown that mechanical Q-switching in CO$_2$ lasers with convective cooling and a self-filtering resonator can be used to provide stable generation of repetitively pulsed radiation at repetition frequencies up to 120 kHz. At low repetition frequencies, the peak power is only limited by the time of Q-switching, which must be smaller than the characteristic duration of the first generation peak. At higher frequencies (40–120 kHz), the observed decrease in the peak power with increasing frequency is caused by limitations related to relaxation processes, i.e., to the rates of population of the upper laser level and depopulation of the lower laser level.