Carbon dioxide waveguide lasers with folds and tilted mirrors.

We present theoretical and experimental results for an rf-excited z-fold CO(2) waveguide laser. We describe how the output power, output rotational line(s) and transverse mode(s) vary as functions of elbow mirror tilt and obtain good agreement with predictions from a multimode matrix resonator model. Observations of multilining and/or multifrequency operation are partly explained by the near equality of gain/loss ratios for two or more resonator modes.