Novel resonators for high power chemical lasers

For the equivalent compacted ring resonator, beam injection can help maintain bare resonator power coupling at the unperturbed value. For small misalignments, injection improves bare beam quality, but it does not improve quality degradation due to astigmatism. For the annular ring resonator, beam injection maintains both bare resonator power coupling and beam quality at the unperturbed values for very small misalignments. And, as expected, this resonator is much more sensitive to misalignment than its equivalent compacted resonator. Additionally, the reverse wave analysis has shown the unstable ring/linear stable MO injection configuration to offer satisfactory reverse wave suppression. Based on bare resonator analyses, injection locking shows promise. To determine its potential, loaded resonator analyses for high-power devices must be performed. Mode discrimination, possible parasitics, sensitivity to misalignment, and scale-ability to high power are potential problems that need in-depth investigation. Additionally, the technical issues associated with cavity length equalization to less than lambda; matching of the MO and HEL spectra; and the stability, mode matching and power requirements for the MO need to be addressed experimentally so the real hardware requirements can be established.