On the gas temperature in coaxial electric-discharge CO2 flow lasers

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Abstract
An analytic and experimental investigation on the dependence of gas temperature on flow and discharge characteristics is presented. The entire range of slow‐ to fast‐flowing coaxial CO2 electric lasers is considered. As is known, at low flow rates the gas temperature is proportional to the electric power input per unit length, while at high flow rates the gas end temperature is proportional to the ratio of total electric power and gas mass flow rate. In addition, gas pressure and entrance Mach number were found to have a noticeable effect on gas temperature; the temperature tends to increase with increasing pressure and to decrease with increasing Mach number. The agreement between theory and experiment is fairly good, so that estimates of gas temperature at given flow and discharge conditions can be obtained. Also presented is an experimental correlation between laser power output (or efficiency) and gas temperature. Finally, scaling laws for temperature‐limited coaxial flow CO2 electric lasers are proposed.