Diffusion-cooled CO2-laser with coaxial high frequency excitation and internal axicon

A report on the design and performance of a coaxial laser system with a stable resonator with internal axicon is given. Efficient diffusion cooling is obtained by using an annular transverse high- frequency excited discharge. Experimental results are compared with the results of a loaded resonator model that takes tilted mirrors into account. The agreement between theory and experiment for extraction efficiency, alignment sensitivity, polarization and mode structure is very good.