highest power CW Laser?

[mixedgas]

Could you elaborate?

Is there a theoretical limit that a laser can not lase past? regardless of power factors.

if power requirements/cooling requirements were of no concern, is there a limit that a laser could just not lase past? Obviously it is depenedent on the lasing medium, but is there some theoretical limit that no matter how much power is used, no matter what is being lased, you just cant get past "X" Watts. (or MW most likely).

-Marc

Each gas laser tube design has a "saturation point" where you cant climb past it, and in some cases, like hene, things start going down in power as you increase current. You can beat saturation by getting longer in a gas.

limits are optical coatings, window materials, bore materials and as pat says, other issues...

Some back of the envelope calculations backed up by looking at some similar medical tubes says a 60X is a 3-4 watt laser if not limited by some things. I'd be happy to discuss those limits in a phone call, but right now I'm a little paranoid about telling some folks here about how to ramp up a ion.

The real nation state actors can figure it out easily enough, but we have some real clowns reading pl right now.

I've sent you a easy to read book reccomendation.


Steve

[Laser Zone]

The Greenlight Pv's sticker says 69 watts 532 cw , but I imagine its long pulse . What really freaked me out was seeing a sticker on a medical co2 laser that said 1500 watts !!!

[Laserman532]

I'll toss this out there as well. (BEO TUBES) It is very difficult to make a long BEO bore, BEO has good vacuum integrity as well as good thermal transfer properties (using an external gas return). In order to increase the output power you basically make a longer bore. Due to the difficulty in making a long bore and maintaining its straightness during thermal abuse, long bores are made in segments. Long segmented bores can grow as much as .25" or more inches during high current operations...the trick is to pump current right up to the line but not cross it...when you cross it you get a separated bore segment resulting in what we at SP would call...a fishbowl.

[Xytrell]

...a medical co2 laser that said 1500 watts !!!

Are you sure its medical at that point? I wasn't aware amputations were performed with lasers

[Laser Zone]

Are you sure its medical at that point? I wasn't aware amputations were performed with lasers

Yup it sure is !! Ill find out the manufacturer and Model #. They have it up in the O.R. and they never use it.

[heroic]

At some point the recirculating optical power in a plasma tube laser is going to reach the point where it exceeds the power density of the pump source (ie., the discharge); at that point I don't know what happens, since you may not be able to keep the plasma in the temperature regime you want. Or you may end up with a situation where you have a huge power gradient from one end of the tube to the other- the end far from the OC has much lower power than the end close to the OC- which would tend to be problematic for tube materials like ceramics and BeO. If you are pumping this system with a single discharge, you obviously have to put the same amount of power into the plasma all the way along its length, so the bore diameter basically ends up being a constant... so really long bores seem to be a problem to me.

You *could* have several tubes inside your cavity... be a devil of a job to align and tune, though.

[protomate]

I think the new laserscope put's out 150w of green. Not sure if it is pulsed or CW. If I am not mistaken, they do prostate surgery around 80w. I have fibers for that procedure and they are around 1000um quartz. I have a 700 & 800 series laserscope. I think they do around 40w of green. Also have a yag pumped KTP that does 50w of green. Not sure what you would need such a powerful laser for shows? Seems like it would blind people and burn the curtains. I aquired mine to cut metals and composites. I had a little 22w scope in the past, and the green coming out of the fiber destroyed my old laptop keyboard (intentional, not an accident). Concerning the saturation point(limiting the output). If argon's are anything like CO2's, the population inversion creating the photon's cannot happen if the gas is too warm. Thus with a given length tube in a flowing gas CO2 100w pr/meter is it. I assume it would be the same for argon? The trick you can use with CO2 is to rapidly circulate the gas via a root's blower or turbo pump. You then run it through a heat exchanger, super cooling the gas. An increase in current is also required. With this method you can obtain powers in the 1000w+pr/meter range. Has anyone ever tried this with an argon set-up? You could take a very small tube, run the gas in an axial direction, and supercool the argon. I have used an old dorm fridge for this when I was poor. Nice little refridgeration system!

[sugeek]

The argon krypton pairs at the Grand Coulee dam installed by Laser Fantasy are all originally speced at 72W but were running at 55W when I visited. But both of these don't count, just neat information. The picture is a Q-Switched YAG.

I'm more impressed by "Whitelight RGB Laser Systems 5-60 Watt"

To my knowledge the only 60+ Watt RGB projectors in existence are the 72W LFI projectors at Grand Coulee, WA and Dayton, Ohio.

-Alex

Reference: http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...9&postcount=87

Hey, can I get in on that deal?



; - )

-Alex

[smogthemog]

I know it's not exactly Visible spectrum but we have two 6kW CO2 CW lasers at work

http://www.trumpf-laser.com/en/produ...ow-lasers.html

[-bart-]

One could always try 16th harmonic generation of a CO2