现有的工业CO₂激光器，主要为横流、纵流和扩散冷却三种。文章提出一种新型激光器，即圆形金属腔CO₂激光器。该激光器的腔体由多个等距、同轴安装的金属腔单元组成。每个腔单元有多个流道，放电在流道与腔体接口处产生，气流将放电及被其激活的粒子吹人腔内，形成增益，输出激光。文章研究了电极结构，金属腔壁对工作气体的冷却作用和腔内的增益分布。研究结果表明：多通道放电吹入和腔内旋流，有利于腔内的均匀放电；金属腔壁有利于腔内对流冷却，降低对气流速度的要求，从而缩小激光器的体积。相邻的腔单元相对转动适当角度，可以提高腔内增益分布的圆周均匀性，从而获得光束质量好的激光束。

The transverse flow, coaxial flow and diffusion cooling are the current types of high power CO₂ laser for industrial applications. A new CO₂ laser is being developed. Its round resonator consists of a number of equally-spaced and coaxially-mounted metal cavity units. Each unit has several channels for gas flow and discharge. The discharge ignited at the interface of the flow channel and the cavity is blown into the cavity, where the particles are excited and gain forms. The electrode structure, metal wall action on the active medium cooling, and the gain distribution have been studied. It is shown that the multi-channel blown-in discharge, intercavity spiral flow and adjacent unit rotating certain angle facilitate the circular uniformity of gain distribution. As a result, a new CO₂ laser with high beam quality and compactness can be obtained.