Search

The new class of diode pumped alkali vapor lasers (DPALs) offers high efficiency cw laser beams at wavelengths which efficiently couple to photovoltaic (PV) cells: silicon cells at 895 nm (cesium), and GaAs cells at 795 nm (rubidium) and at 770 nm (potassium). DPAL electrical efficiencies of 25–30% are projected, enabling PV cell efficiencies ∼40% (Si) and ∼60% (GaAs). Near‐diffraction‐limited DPAL device power scaling into the multi‐kilowatt regime from a single aperture is projected. The potential application to power beaming propulsion to raise satellites from LEO to Geo is discussed.

Summary from only given. We have built and tested a scaleable, half-aperture, dual KD/sub 2/PO/sub 4/ (DKDP) crystal Pockels cell, which, in off-line testing, exhibits less than 0.5% depolarization when thermally loaded with a 100 W near-infrared laser. The arrangement uses a pair of DKDP crystals as a thermally compensated Q-switch.

A new family of laser diode packages has been developed using silicon V-groove technology. Different versions of the package that tradeoff simplicity and performance for applications requiring low duty factor and high peak power operation, or high duty factor and high average power operation, have been demonstrated.

Initial measurements are reported for the Mercury laser system, a scalable driver for rep-rated high energy density physics research. The performance goals include 10% electrical efficiency at 10 Hz and 100 J with a 2-10 ns pulse length. This laser is an angularly multiplexed 4-pass gas-cooled amplifier system based on image relaying to minimize wavefront distortion and optical damage risk at the 10 Hz operating point. The efficiency requirements are fulfilled using diode laser pumping of ytterbium doped strontium fluorapatite crystals.