Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
1540871 | Optics Communications | 2008 | 9 Pages |
Abstract
It is established here that kinetically enhanced copper vapor lasers (KE-CVLs) based on large-bore discharge tubes can provide high (>1.4%) efficiency at â¼9-10 kHz rep-rate with very low (<2 kW/l) specific input power. Comparative performance of various large-bore kinetically enhanced copper vapor lasers in the range 45-70 mm is presented for most suitable discharge tube. Maximum output power of â¼100 W was achieved with efficiency of about 1.55% at 10 kHz rep-rate from the 60 mm bore KE-CVL. The pulse to pulse efficiency of the KE-CVL was â¼2%, tube efficiency â¼2.1%, and laser pulse energy was about â¼10 mJ. These results show significant advancement in the laser system as an elemental high temperature CVL due to volumetric scaling and KE-effects combined with very low specific input power of â¼1.65 kW/l as compared to 8-9 kW/l normally required in other kinetically enhanced copper vapor lasers to generate â¼100 W output power. Performance of the KE-CVL with 3 new cavity configurations namely, (1) CAT-EYE resonator (2) hybrid resonator, and (3) modified diffraction coupled resonator with dot mirrors are presented for the first here. CAT-EYE resonator was demonstrated to achieve high misalignment tolerance without significant loss of power. A typical drift in power of â¼5% was observed with misalignment responsible for 40% decline in power in case of standard plane-plane cavity. Effect of resonator misalignment on amplifier output drift was also investigated using CAT-EYE resonator in oscillator-amplifier configuration. In case of using stable-unstable hybrid resonator, high magnification of M â¼Â 1500 was realized resulting in extremely low divergence (â¼0.08 mrad) beam with modest (â¼20%) loss in average power. In case of modified DCR cavity, record power of about 48 W was achieved with beam divergence of about 0.1 mrad on using intra-cavity 2 Ã 2 array of 4 dot mirrors.
Keywords
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Physical Sciences and Engineering
Materials Science
Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
Authors
Bijendra Singh, V.V. Subramaniam, S.R. Daultabad, Ashim Chakraborty,