Abstract

During the last decade optically pumped lasers have been developed which operate at a large number of discrete wavelengths between 30 µm and 2 mm. We report here what we believe to be the first experimental demonstration of nearly continuous tunability over a large portion of the FIR spectrum, which has been obtained by pumping a simple polyatomic molecule with a high pressure CO₂ laser. It has previously been demonstrated that off-resonant pumping can produce FIR gain via stimulated Raman emission, and, under appropriate pumping conditions, two-photon processes of this kind can dominate the FIR gain^1,2.

© 1981 Optical Society of America