highest power CW Laser?

[Laserman532]

I believe Nd:YAG with intra-cavity KTP or LBO has the best cost to perceived brightness ratio of any LASER, CW or Q-switched.

Yes i noticed that in the early 90's when I introduced the Ultra Ray YAG laser system. The cost to perceived brightness ratio used to be less when it was more exotic and special and only true professionals could afford to own one and operate it safely and legally. Now days the cost to perceived brightness ratio is almost infinity. When it gets to the point when a common DJ with absolutely ZERO laser experience can hack together an obsolete vag-burner and go out and do unsafe illegal shows, they are nothing special, its just another piece of dangerous equipment in untrained hands.

That's why it quickly became the darling of the laser show industry since its discovery.

Your welcome.

[buffo]

Atomic Vapour Laser Isotope Separation

Bingo! I knew someone here would remember...

current thinking seems to favour copper vapour pumped dye laser/amplifier setups (At least as far as the civilian literature is concerned).

Hmmm... Wonder why they'd go with all the hassle and power loss of dye? I mean, given that you mentioned that the optimal line is around 500 nm... Argon has several lines that are already very close to that. Then too, the copper vapor laser has a line at 510...

I seem to recall something about the Australians building a pilot plant?

Anyone else have any info on this? Genuinely curious...

Adam

[DMills]

Very close wont do, 238U absorption peak shifts from 502.74 nm to 502.73 nm in 235U[1], a shift of 0.01nm, that is how fine the tuning required is (You are talking a pretty good single mode laser to have the close in spurs low enough).

The pilot I was thinking of was a SILEX plant that is actually being done by GE in the states, this is a slightly different process that uses photochemistry to convert UF6 (gas) to a UF5 salt (solid), again the process rate depends on matching a hyperfine transition so the tuning will again be critical.

I found a power level quoted for the (now cancelled) work at LANL on this, they were quoting north of 1KW beam power at 502nm!

Regards, Dan.

[1] Wikipedia article, but I see no reason the disbelieve the figure.

[mixedgas]

[QUOTE=DMills;123900]Very close wont do, 238U absorption peak shifts from 502.74 nm to 502.73 nm in 235U[1], a shift of 0.01nm, that is how fine the tuning required is (You are talking a pretty good single mode laser to have the close in spurs low enough).

Hum , considering one of my university toys tuned in roughly 1 ghz steps.....
In my case my Prof didnt care where we were, when locked to the iodine fine transitions, just as long as we stayed locked for 24-48-72 hours. Its doable, but man, expensive. I knew i had a decent laser, with a incredible coherent length, Its just I didn't know which step some place where in the 300 Ghz range I was. Modern stuff is much, much better then that.

Coherent made dye systems locked to interferometers that made tuning in 10 mhz steps possible, but how many sidebands they had I do not know. The broadening in the amplifiers would have been nasty.

I have reason to believe that modern laser isotope stuff is/was done with multiple IR transitions.

The problem is finding out where you are, in that big, big, big, gain/bandwidth world. Thank God its not my problem.

Steve

[DMills]

Yea, there are at least 3 basic techniques in the civilian literature, and the one that now seems to be getting attention (SILEX) works by photochemisty involving two beams (one excites the UF6 with a bias depending on exact tuning) and the other then encourages a chemical reaction producing a UF5 compound and a florine salt.

The UF5 is a solid where the UF6 is a gas.

There is also some mention of a 3 beam process that does not require reflorination between stages, but I have not been able to find a good description of the dynamics of that (Not that I looked very hard).

Regards, Dan.

[Laserman532]

funny you got to it before i did steve. I was about to mention scanning stabilized ring dye lasers a hunk of cake.