High-power CO(2) laser-beam monitor

A diagnostic system for measuring the beam power and quality of a high-power cw CO(2) electro-aerodynamic laser is described. A ZnSe beamsplitter was employed to split off a small fraction (0.5%) of the main laser beam for diagnostic purposes. The low-power beam was split again to provide two beams for power and energy-distribution measurements, concurrent with sample irradiation by the main beam. An electrically calibrated disk calorimeter was used to measure beam power. The temporal and spatial energy distributions were measured by means of a mechanically scanned, one-dimensional pyroelectric array. This provided a 16x16 element two-dimensional map of the beam profile at a rate of up to 10 Hz.