Abstract
A method was developed for investigating, with nanosecond resolution, the evolution of the divergence of radiation from a pulse-periodic laser. The method was based on gating which was used to find the distribution of the radiation intensity across a beam at any moment during a pulse. A study was made of the kinetics of the divergence during an output pulse of a transverse-discharge copper vapor laser. It was established that in the case of a plane-parallel resonator the divergence varied during a laser pulse from 1.3×10−2 to 0.7×10−3 rad. The experimental error was 10%.