Beam Quality Issues in CVL Applications

Despite of the long development age of CVL, only recently this class of lasers has escaped the classified cage of national energy related programs to merge into the wide interest of material processing. The CVL emission parameters have been actually found to meet the conditions for very high precision machining of many kinds of materials [1,2,3]. One crucial condition is the beam quality, to operate in material processing with a highly competitive role in respect with the other class of lasers. In facts infrared lasers have a well established utilisation in coarse cutting and drilling of materials. Shorter wavelength lasers, such as UV excimer lasers, are being under study to overcome the focusing capability and the energy coupling limits of the IR lasers, with an extensive set of Projects devoted to the development of powerful and reliable laser sources to be employed in material processing with a higher standard of precision. Nevertheless the excitation parameters and the halogen compound gas mixture imply specific solutions which rise the cost of the emitted photon to the top of the various laser classes proposed for the industry.