In the thirty years since the invention of the CO2 gas laser, the major design issue has shifted from how to obtain the desired power level to how to achieve reliable operation. At the same time, the opening of many laser development facilities in the Former Soviet Union has allowed their achievements and design approaches to be understood and appreciated for the first time. Further, the industrial laser user community has identified a number of emerging applications at higher power levels (15-20 kW) than are attainable by most commercial devices.
In High Power Lasers - Science and Engineering, the designers, developers and users of high-power gas laser systems discuss design approaches, methods of enhancing performance, new applications, and user requirements.

Zusammenfassung
Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, July 16-29, 1995

Inhalt
I: Design Aspects.- Characteristics of High Power (CO2) Lasers.- Electric-Discharge Pumping.- Spatial and Temporal Scales of Active Medium Inhomogeneities in High Power Gas Lasers.- Gas Lasers with Plasmodynamic Pumping.- Study of Gain Media for High Power Gas Flow Lasers.- On Unstable Resonators Producing Compact Output Beam.- Dynamics of Lasers with Passive and Active Modulation of Losses.- The Time Evolution of the Electric Characteristics of a Laser Discharge Through Their Waveforms of the Voltage and the Current.- Metal Vapour Lasers.- Design and Analysis of a Deep UV Laser Based on Ce3+: LiSrAIF6.- Simultaneous Emission in UV and IR Region in a Sliding Discharge Excited Laser.- Experimental and Theoretical Results of High Optical Quality Excimer Laser Beams.- A High Efficiency Soft X-Ray Laser in the 2530 nm Spectral Region.- The Asterix IV Iodine Laser: Performance and Applications.- II: Optics.- High Power Solid State Lasers with Phase Conjugation for Applications with High Beam Quality.- Laser Resonator Concepts.- Variable Reflectivity Mirror Unstable Resonator Thermal Lens Compensated by a Deformable Rear Mirror.- Two-Rod VRM-Unstable Resonator with Deformable Mirror Thermal Compensation.- Beam Transport Optics for High-Power Laser Systems.- High-Power UV Excilamps.- Reproducible Ultrashort Pulses and Multistable Monochromatic Emission from Solid-State Lasers with Saturable Absorber and Negative Feedback Loop.- An Extended Characterization of Flattened Gaussian Beams.- Optics for X-Ray Laser and Laser Plasma Soft X-Ray Radiation.- Computer Simulation of the Laser Beam Intensity Distribution in Resonant Cavities.- III: Measurements.- Laser Medium Quality Control.- Laser Thermal-Wave Diagnostics of Stressed States in Metals.- Experimental Studies ofReflection Ability of Liquid Metal Targets in Vacuum Under Conditions of Neodymium Laser Pulse Radiation.- Reconstruction of a Light Beam Wave Front by Synthesis of a Shear Interferogram.- Experimental Investigations of the Output Beam Properties from a High Power CW CO2 Laser.- The Applications of a Near-IR Laser to Raman Spectroscopy: FT-Raman Spectroscopic Studies of Adsorbed Species by Clays.- IV: Applications.- High-Power Lasers in Materials Processing an Automotive Perspective.- LCVD with Copper Vapour and Copper Bromide Vapour Lasers Review.- Laser Deposition and Characterization of A-C and A-C:N Films.- Anisotropic Melting of Semiconductor at Irradiation by Powerful Light Pulses.- Excimer Laser Assisted Deposition and Characterization of Molybdenum Films Fabrication of Molybdenum Coatings on Optical Fibres.- Pulsed Laser-Induced Synthesis of Metal Sulphides in Sulphurous Liquids Under Action of Shock Waves.- Laser Patterning of Thin Films.- Applications of Nd and Er:YAG Lasers in Ophthalmology and Dentistry.- Late Submissions.- History, Current Status and Outlook for the Future of High Power Solid State Lasers.- Industrial Fast Axial Flow Carbon Dioxide Lasers.- Fundamentals and Current Status of Excimer Lasers.- List of Participants.