Continuously tunable line-narrowed TE CO_2 laser using a near grazing incidence grating

It is demonstrated that a high angle grating configuration (near grazing incidence) can successfully be employed as a simple and convenient means of producing line-narrowed emission from a high pressure TE CO2 laser. With a standard blazed grating used at angles up to ~80°, a continuously tunable emission with a linewidth of ~0.9 GHz has been obtained using a short-gain length 10-atm pressure laser.